Blockchain for Banking Capital markets News

Blockchain firm Figure raises $200 million at $3.2 billion valuation

mike cagney figure ceo

Today Figure Technologies, the blockchain finance firm set up by SoFi founder Mike Cagney, announced it raised a $200 million Series D round of funding at a $3.2 billion valuation. Previous equity funding rounds have totaled more than $230 million apart from debt financing for its home lending business which has surpassed $1 billion.

The round was co-led by 10T Holdings and Morgan Creek Digital and other participants include DCM, Digital Currency Group, HCM Capital, Ribbit Capital, RPM Ventures, the partners at DST Global and others. 10T and Morgan Creek each take a seat on the board.

Figure has numerous activities in the blockchain sector, which all use the Provenance blockchain that it created. It started off focusing on financing domestic real estate (HELOCs to be specific) and has since expanded into capital table management, fund management and administration, banking and payments. Figure Pay aims to provide point-of-sale credit to the unbanked and underbanked. Yesterday it even had a Congressional Representative asking the head of the OCC about the progress of its national bank charter application.

On top of all that, it set up a SPAC.

“Morgan Creek Digital is excited to support Figure because they not only built a world class lending business, but they also built a unique blockchain platform with the financial services industry in mind,” said Sachin Jaitly, General Partner at Morgan Creek. “Provenance, a new set of financial rails that is faster and less expensive than alternative solutions and is on the precipice of becoming adopted by major financial institutions.”

It originally developed the bespoke Provenance blockchain as a permissioned ledger targeting financial institutions. However, yesterday it relaunched as a public permissionless and open source blockchain based on Cosmos technology. Like almost all public blockchains, it is operated by a Foundation. Most foundations attempt to distance themselves from their founder, but in this case, the President is June Ou, Figure’s Chief Operating Officer, and wife of Figure founder Mike Cagney. 

One of the reasons for the separation is to claim that a token is not a security. When Provenance issued its token, it was through a security token offering.


Image Copyright: Figure