Social Finance (SoFi), a personal finance companyhelping people to achieve financial independence to realize their ambitions having a stagnant valuation of $4.3 billionand founded by Mike Cagney, Dan Macklin, James Finnigan, and Ian Brady who met themselves at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, based in San Fransisco, began in 2011 has raised $500 million in a funding round led by Qatar Investment Authority, a Doha, Qatar based private equity and sovereign wealth fund. The company would use the fund for growth and add money to its $2.3 billion balance sheet.
Started originally with student loan financing for millenials, but has expanded in other markets such as personal and mortgage loans. It also side- handedly manages management services along with mortgage refinance. The company appeals to have 700,000 members as well as 7.5 million registered users. The company offers livelihood to around 1300 employees. Provide hand-holding tools for borrowing, saving, spending, investing, and protecting money.
The company raised its first investment round $77.2 million from Baseline Ventures with participation from DCM and Renren in September 2012. On October 2013, the company announced that it had raised $500 million in debt and equity to fund and refinance student loans. In April 2014, the company raised $80 million in Series C round from Discovery Capital Management with joint support from Peter Thiel, Wicklow Capital and other investors. In February 2015, the company announced a $200 million funding round led by Third Point Management. The company has also raised a $1 billion round of investment from Softbank. In February 2017, it announced to being raised an additional $500 million from an investor group led by Silver Lake.
“Over the last year, we have worked aggressively to grow SoFi from a desktop lending business to a broad- based, mobile first financial platform enabling members to borrow, save, spend, invest and protect their money,” said Anthony Noto, CEO of SoFi who has previously worked as chief operating officer for Twitter and been managing director at Goldman Sachs.
The company has teamed up with Coinbase for a zero-fee branded crypto currency trading platform, and there are plans for a credit card by the end of the year. The company also introduced a product called SoFi Money, which is a cash account that has a 2.25 percent annual percentage yield. It has introduced two no-fee exchange traded funds last month.
Qatar Investment Authority is the Qatar’s state owned holding company. Founded in 2005 by the State of Qatar to strengthen the country’s economy by diversifying into new asset classes.
