SoFi Founder Starts New Blockchain Loan Startup

SoFi Founder and former CEO Mike Cagney is getting ready to launch a startup offering home equity loans.

According to Bloomberg, Cagney has raised $50 million for San Francisco-based Figure, which will use blockchain to expedite loan approvals in minutes rather than days.

Sources say that two global banks have agreed to finance the loans, while multiple firms have agreed to purchase them.

The investment round was led by Ribbit Capital and DCM Ventures, with the participation of other investors including Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management.

At the beginning of the year, it was reported that Cagney was approaching investors about a new FinTech startup, looking to raise around $25 million.

Cagney founded Social Finance, which has become one of Silicon Valley’s more prominent alternative lenders. It is currently valued at more than $4 billion and has raised nearly $2 billion from investors.

He was ousted from the company last year due to allegations of sexual harassment, as well as accusations by former employees that he had inappropriate relationships with members of SoFi’s younger female staff.

Cagney’s wife, June Ou, who served as SoFi’s chief technology officer, left her position a few months later. She is working with Cagney on this new endeavor, and in January she even included a job post looking for engineers on LinkedIn:

“We are launching a new FinTech-focused company in the credit enablement space with the mission of leveraging blockchain, AI and advanced analytics to unlock new access points for consumer credit products that can transform the financial lives of our users,” said the listing. “We are a group of passionate innovators and serial entrepreneurs with a proven track record of creating billions of dollars in value in the FinTech space.”

The company will be based in downtown San Francisco; however, the engineering jobs are based in Bozeman, Montana, near where some of the SoFi engineering team is located.

Figure currently has about 56 employees, including the former Chief Risk Officer of LendingHome, Cynthia Chen, and former PeerStreet Chief Legal Counsel Sara Priola.

Figure and Cagney confirmed the financing details, and the startup plans to begin lending in the third quarter.