Kiavi

Overview

Kiavi — the company that began life in 2013 as LendingHome and rebranded in September 2021 — is one of the largest private lenders to U.S. residential real-estate investors, funding fix-and-flip bridge loans and longer-term rental loans (Inman). Its business runs on two rails: an AI- and data-driven origination platform aimed at investors, and a revolving Wall Street securitization program that packages its short-term “residential transition loans” for institutional buyers (Inman). In September 2026, blockchain lender Figure Technology Solutions completed a $717 million acquisition of Kiavi’s technology and operating platform, and Kiavi now operates as a Figure subsidiary — so the independent company most bios describe no longer exists in that form (HousingWire).

LendingHome: from mortgage marketplace to investor lender

LendingHome was founded in 2013 as an online mortgage marketplace before pivoting to its own lending products for professional and first-time real-estate investors (Global Venturing). Its funding arc reads as a tour of 2010s fintech capital: an $11.3 million Foundation Capital-led Series A in 2013, a $28 million Ribbit Capital-led Series B in 2014, a $70 million Renren-led Series C in 2015, a $57 million Sberbank- and Noah Holdings-backed Series C-2 in 2017 alongside a $300 million credit facility, and a $75 million Series E led by Benefit Street Partners in December 2020 (Global Venturing). The 2017 round was paired with the $100 million LendingHome Opportunity Fund II, a vehicle set up to buy the company’s high-yield bridge loans (Global Venturing).

Leadership changed with the Series E: co-founder Matt Humphrey stepped down as CEO — staying on the board — and Michael Bourque took over (Global Venturing). By then the company had originated more than $6 billion in loans (Global Venturing).

The 2021 rebrand

In September 2021 LendingHome announced it would become “Kiavi,” described as a phonetic rendering of the Italian word “chiave” — key — meant to reflect growth beyond its original bridge-lending niche into rental-investor products (Inman). At the rebrand the company reported $7.8 billion in loans funded across 35,000 projects since 2013, and said its machine-learning models drew on more than 900 million data points (Inman).

The securitization engine

Kiavi’s distinctive feature as a private lender was its capital-markets machine. Since launching a revolving securitization program in 2019 under its LHOME shelf, it repeatedly bundled unrated short-term mortgages — “residential transition loans” (RTLs), typically 12-to-36-month interest-only balloon loans to flippers — and sold them to institutional investors, reinvesting principal payoffs into new originations during two-year revolving periods (HousingWire). A $218 million deal in June 2022 was its ninth; it was expected to support about $750 million in originations (HousingWire). Inside Mortgage Finance ranked Kiavi the top short-term fix-and-flip lender for 2021, with $2.7 billion in originations, up nearly 78% from 2020 (HousingWire).

The product itself was built for speed: short-term bridge loans of up to $2.5 million in 32 states and Washington, D.C., funding up to 95% of a home’s purchase price without verifying the borrower’s income, employment or assets — underwriting the investment project instead — plus longer-term debt-service-coverage-ratio (DSCR) loans for buy-and-hold rental investors (Inman). By February 2024 the company had closed 16 securitizations totaling $4 billion and reported $17.5 billion in loans funded to date (Inman).

The 2022–2023 reset

Rising rates hit the model hard. In July 2022, weeks after offloading more than $200 million in loans to Wall Street investors, Kiavi laid off 39 employees — about 7% of its workforce, per HousingWire’s reporting — with CEO Bourque telling staff that “because we are in the hard money space, we don’t have a lot of investors willing to buy our assets because of the rate hikes” (Inman). The company insisted it was still lending, adjusting credit and pricing for the new market (Inman). The board then revamped management: Arvind Mohan, who had joined Kiavi in 2016 and served as chief operating officer, was promoted to CEO in February 2023 to succeed Bourque (Inman). Under Mohan, Kiavi funded a record $4 billion in loans in 2023 (Inman).

Sold to Figure

In June 2026, Figure Technology Solutions — a Nasdaq-listed fintech running a blockchain-native lending marketplace — announced a $717 million deal to acquire Kiavi’s technology, operating platform and certain other assets (HousingWire). The deal closed on September 1, 2026: a joint venture between Figure and Sixth Street purchased the loans off Kiavi’s balance sheet, while Figure folded Kiavi’s RTL and DSCR platform into its Figure Connect marketplace across more than 480 ecosystem partners (HousingWire). Mohan joined Figure as chief business officer to lead the rollout, and San Francisco-based Kiavi now operates as a Figure subsidiary (HousingWire). Figure said the combination adds more than $7 billion a year in new first-lien volume to its marketplace (HousingWire).

What this profile does not claim

• It does not state Kiavi’s current origination volumes or headcount; no post-acquisition figures were independently verified.
• It does not describe what happened to the LendingHome brand, domain, or corporate entities after the Figure deal; that was not verified.
• Financial and loan-volume figures above are the company’s own claims as reported by the cited press; they are attributed, not independently audited here.
• It does not cover any consumer-lending regulatory actions against Kiavi; none were found in the independent sources read.