Blend has raised USD100 million in a Series D funding round led by Greylock Partners with participation from Emergence Capital, 8VC, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Nyca Partners, bringing the company’s total funding to USD166 million.
“We saw a massive opportunity in Blend and the work they are doing to deliver transparent, frictionless, accessible mortgages for everyone,” says Jerry Chen, partner at Greylock Partners. “Banks and lenders understand the need for innovation, but they can’t do it alone. Blend is in a unique position to change the consumer lending industry with an unparalleled team of engineers, designers and product and data experts committed to helping people along their homebuying journey.”
Founded in 2012, Blend has been on a rapid growth trajectory. Since January 2016, the company has tripled its customer base, which includes the country’s top mortgage lender, Wells Fargo, along with other top lenders like Movement Mortgage. The platform has seen more than USD30 billion in mortgage applications in 2017 alone, and the company has also doubled in size to nearly 200 people. They have also opened new offices in San Francisco and New York.
“We started Blend in the wake of the financial crisis to bring simplicity and transparency to an industry that had long been underserved by technology, and had a compelling need for digitisation,” says Nima Ghamsari, CEO and founder at Blend. “Today, the impact of our intuitive, modern platform is felt by hundreds of thousands of borrowers across the country. Our partners command around 25 per cent of the total U.S. mortgage market, and with this round of funding, we have the opportunity to expand the breadth of our product and serve more borrowers.”
With the new capital, Blend is in a position to accelerate innovation across the consumer lending ecosystem and around the world. In addition to expanding its staff, the company plans to replicate its success with mortgages – the most extensive, data-heavy loan product – to other types of loans and expand operations outside the US in the near-term.
