Introduction
Figure is a financial technology company that originates home equity lines of credit and other consumer loans and records them on its own blockchain, Provenance, rather than relying solely on traditional paper-based loan infrastructure. It was founded in 2018 by Mike Cagney, previously co-founder and CEO of SoFi, together with June Ou, and completed an initial public offering on the Nasdaq in September 2025 under the ticker FIGR.
Figure sits at an intersection that’s relevant to Brel’s AI in finance coverage even though its headline technology is blockchain rather than a machine-learning model on its own: automated, technology-driven origination and securitization of loans, paired with distributed-ledger record-keeping, is one way the industry is trying to strip cost and delay out of a lending process that has historically depended on manual document handling.
What the company does
Figure originates home equity lines of credit, cash-out refinance loans, debt-service-coverage-ratio loans for investment properties, and crypto-backed loans, using an automated origination system that Figure says enables near-instant approval decisions compared with traditional home equity lending timelines. Through Figure Connect, more than 175 partner loan originators use Figure’s technology to produce standardized, blockchain-recorded loan records that are then sold to institutional buyers in a secondary market, rather than each partner separately building comparable infrastructure.
Who it serves
Figure Lending LLC, the company’s lending subsidiary, serves homeowners directly across most U.S. states, while Figure Connect serves the network of loan originators and institutional capital markets participants who originate and buy the underlying loan assets. According to Figure’s own investor materials, its ecosystem has funded more than $16 billion in home equity loans to date, drawing on a home equity market the company estimates at roughly $35 trillion in the United States, which it points to as the scale of the opportunity its origination and securitization technology is built to address.
Company background
Figure Technology Solutions was founded in 2018 by Mike Cagney and June Ou; Figure’s own board-of-directors page confirms Ou as one of the company’s co-founders. Cagney had previously co-founded and led SoFi as CEO before starting Figure, while Ou had served as SoFi’s Chief Technology Officer. The company’s structure has changed more than once: in August 2021 it agreed to merge with mortgage lender Homebridge Financial Services, a deal called off in June 2022; in March 2024 it spun its lending business into a new parent entity; and later in 2024 Cagney split the business into a lending-focused Figure and a trading-focused Figure Markets, serving as Executive Chairman of the former and CEO of the latter. The two businesses recombined in August 2025 ahead of Figure’s September 2025 IPO on the Nasdaq. Michael Tannenbaum serves as Figure’s CEO following the recombination, with Cagney continuing as Executive Chairman.
Product and AI capabilities
Figure’s primary technical contribution is automating loan origination and securitization end to end, using its Provenance Blockchain to create a standardized, digitally recorded loan asset rather than the paper-heavy files traditional mortgage-adjacent lending relies on — reducing the manual reconciliation work that otherwise slows down verifying who owns a given loan and on what terms. Layered on top of that infrastructure, Figure’s origination system is built to return underwriting decisions on home equity applications in a fraction of the time associated with conventional home equity lending, drawing on automated income, asset, and property-value verification rather than fully manual underwriting review.
Key developments
Figure was founded in 2018 and introduced blockchain-recorded home equity lines of credit that year, followed by a large HELOC-backed securitization in 2020. A planned 2021 merger with Homebridge Financial Services was cancelled in 2022. The company restructured multiple times between 2024 and 2025 — spinning off its lending division, splitting into Figure and Figure Markets, and then recombining the two — before completing its IPO on the Nasdaq in September 2025 under ticker FIGR.
Why it matters
Figure is a useful example of how automation and distributed-ledger record-keeping are being combined in a lending category — home equity — that has historically been slow and paper-intensive, and its multiple corporate restructurings on the way to a 2025 IPO are also a reminder that companies building novel financial infrastructure often take a winding path to a stable public structure. Readers should note that Figure’s technology bet is centered on blockchain-based origination and securitization rather than a headline machine-learning underwriting model, which distinguishes it from AI-underwriting-first companies elsewhere in this sector. Its 2025 stablecoin approval and Democratized Prime lending protocol also show the company extending the same automation logic from mortgage-adjacent lending into broader digital-asset markets.
Sector context
Within Brel’s AI in finance coverage, Figure is most clearly understood alongside AI-driven lending networks such as Pagaya and document-automation vendors such as Ocrolus, since all three are working on different pieces of the same problem: making loan origination, verification, and secondary-market trading faster and less manual, whether through blockchain infrastructure, network-based risk-sharing, or document AI.
Sources and references
This profile draws on Figure’s own investor relations materials, including its board-of-directors biography of co-founder June Ou, and independent reference sources.
- Figure Technology Solutions — Board of Directors, June Ou bio (investors.figure.com)
- Figure Investor Relations — “Figure Technology Solutions and Figure Markets Merge…” (2025)
- Wikipedia — “Figure Technology Solutions”