SoFi confirms $500m investment led by Qatar
In a round led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), personal finance solution provider SoFi has raised more than $500 million in equity funding, writes David Penn at Finovate. The talks of the deal were recently reported by FinTech Futures and it has now been confirmed.
Qatar – pretty and full of money
The new capital gives the San Francisco, California-based company a valuation of $4.3 billion, and will drive investment, the company says in its press release, in continued innovation and growth. SoFi’s total capital now stands at $2.3 billion.
QIA CEO Mansoor Al-Mahmoud highlights SoFi’s long-term vision, which has enabled the company to evolve into a major personal finance platform for both lending and wealth management.
“We strongly believe in SoFi’s approach, and their dedication to build a transformational financial platform that is rapidly disrupting consumer finance,” he says.
In his statement, SoFi CEO Anthony Noto underscores the company’s transformation, as well. “Over the last year, we’ve 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,” Noto says.
With more than 700,000 members and 7.5+ million registered users, SoFi offers a variety of personal finance solutions in lending and wealth management. These include the company’s student loan refinancing and mortgages offerings, as well as newer products like SoFi Invest and SofiMoney.
SoFi Invest, launched at the beginning of the year, is a stock and ETF trading and investing platform that also allows for automated investing. SoFi Money combines the best of checking and savings accounts into a single account with a 2.25% APY and an app to facilitate mobile spending, saving, and payment.
Earlier this month, SoFi announced that it was introducing an exchange-traded fund based on the gig economy, GIGE. The actively managed fund – run by Toroso Investments – enables investors to participate in the stock market gains of companies like eBay, Lyft, Square, and Twitter.
In April, the company teamed up with Lemonade and Root to add to its insurance offerings.
