Upstart Loan Originations Jump 50% as It Preps Bank Launch

Digital lender Upstart saw loan originations jump 50% as it prepares to launch its bank.

The company reported earnings Tuesday (Aug. 5) showing revenues of $365 million, a 42% increase over the same quarter in 2025. Loan originations came to $4.2 billion, with Upstart originating a record 558,000.

During an earnings call, CEO Paul Gu characterized the results as evidence of the company’s technological advantage, reminding analysts of his contention on an earlier call that “core personal loans are our superpower.” He added that the company’s technology lead in that segment generates “unusually strong margins.”

Upstart said it is increasingly shifting away from a one-time transactional model toward a broader relationship with the American consumer. Approximately 1 in 13 American adults now has an account with Upstart, according to the company.

Management noted that while the company had once focused on a conversion rate for one-time loans, it is now prioritizing the lifecycle of the borrower. Gu added that the company is less focused on FICO scores as a lending metric.

“We’re really serving a pretty full spectrum of people that are just new to credit or trying to repair their credit, all the way to people who are really prime and can qualify for really great rates, have a home,” he said.

“We’re getting that full spectrum. One of the things you may see in our earnings materials is that we like to note that we’re going to be replacing the conversion rate metric and sunsetting that particular one just because it’s so sensitive to the mixes that it’s a little hard to interpret. That’s what I would say about it is we’re serving a pretty full spectrum.”

Meanwhile, management said Upstart has moved its underwriting to a new distributed inference platform that processes applications 65% faster. Gu said the company’s models are now 2.74 times as accurate as traditional credit scoring benchmarks.

The company is applying automation to more complex products as well. Upstart can now close a home equity line of credit (HELOC) loan in six days, whereas traditional banks often take weeks or months, said Gu.

The earnings follow Upstart’s announcement last month that it had received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a bank called Upstart Bank, N.A.

Andrea Blankmeyer, Upstart’s chief financial officer, said the lender expects to “pretty quickly move the bulk to all of our originations through to Upstart Bank from the current partners that we’re originating with today.”

She added that the company expects “the core elements of the operations of the bank to be up and running relatively shortly after the launch of the bank.”