SoFi recently conducted a round of quarterly performance reviews and subsequently cut 7% of their staff; just over a month...
In this conversation, Will Beeson and I break down a few important pieces of recent news — the SPACs for SoFi and Bakkt, and Plaid/Visa falling apart.
SoFi is going public with a SPAC deal worth over $8 billion. A few things we touch on in detail: (1) this is still largely a lender, (2) there is a gem of an embedded finance play called Galileo that SoFi owns, and (3) the multiple is a little over 10x T12 revenues, which is not crazy expensive, but not cheap.
Speaking of Galileo and finance APIs, we transition to Plaid, and how it is is not going to be one of the networks in Visa’s network of networks. Who wins and who loses in the equation? And last, we cover the Bakkt SPAC of over $2 billion and our view on its future.
The canary is now 10+ years old as prominent platforms like SoFi and Upstart launched in the early 2010s, and Freedom Financial (now Achieve) has been around for two decades.
Last week I chatted with Mike Cagney, CEO of SoFi, to talk about recent developments with their student loan platform....
There is no question that student lending is a massive market and several companies in the online lending industry have been...
Until last month it was unknown how SoFi, the most successful fintech firm in the US, was going to offer...
It has been a bad few weeks for SoFi. Back in August there was the news of a sexual harassment...
SoFi has announced details of its latest fundraising round which now adds $500 million in new equity capital for the firm; the financing was led by Silver Lake and included SoftBank and GPI Capital; the fundraising will support the continued expansion for the firm; it now offers student loan refinancing, personal loans, mortgage loans, life insurance, wealth management and banking; it also plans to expand its services to Australia and Canada. Source
SoFi has developed a new marketplace lending fund primarily targeting family offices; a regulatory filing shows the fund as SoFi Prime Income Fund with 33 investors each investing a minimum of $500,000; total fund investment is $105 million; the Fund will focus on investing in SoFi's unsecured student and personal loans. Source
This morning, SoFi announced they have agreed to acquire Galileo Financial Technologies for $1.2 billion in cash and stock. It...