Figure Technology Solutions (FIGR), the blockchain-native marketplace for tokenized loans, began a $600mn private offering of senior notes due 2031 on 6 Jul, converting a bridge loan into permanent debt to bankroll its move deeper into real-estate lending. Its shares fell despite a forecast-beating quarter, closing at $31.05 on 7 Jul, roughly 9% below the highs held just before the announcement, as investors weighed the new debt. In premarket trading on 8 Jul at 13:00UTC, FIGR shares were trading at $31.00.
The move captures a bet at the core of Figure’s strategy: that a blockchain-native firm can grow by absorbing conventional lending books and running them on tokenized rails, funded like any other lender in the bond market. It also lands as a test of investor patience, with the market so far more focused on the fresh leverage than on the volumes the strategy is producing.
Bridge to permanent debt
The proceeds will fund the roughly $538mn cash portion Figure owes for its acquisition of Kiavi, an AI-powered lender to residential property investors, in a deal announced on 10 Jun and valued at $717mn in total. A joint venture between Figure and investment firm Sixth Street is buying Kiavi’s balance-sheet loans, while Figure takes the technology and operating platform. The offering is not conditioned on the acquisition closing, which the companies expect in the second half of the year subject to regulatory approval.
Figure had initially lined up a $600mn bridge facility from Bank of America and Barclays for the deal; the note sale replaces it with longer-dated capital markets debt.
Conventional lending onto tokenized rails
The purchase pulls a large traditional lending book onto Figure’s blockchain infrastructure. Kiavi, the largest US non-bank lender for residential transition loans, would add more than $7bn a year of first-lien volume to Figure’s marketplace and over $100mn a month to Democratized Prime, its onchain warehouse platform.
A beat the market ignored
Figure reported preliminary second-quarter operating data on 7 Jul that topped its guidance. Consumer loan marketplace volume reached $4.26bn in the quarter, up 132% year-on-year, and $1.52bn in June alone. Circulation of $YLDS, its SEC-registered yield-bearing stablecoin, stood at $556mn at the end of June, against $4mn a year earlier. The company also said it would move from monthly disclosures to a weekly operating dashboard, an unusual degree of transparency for a firm that listed on Nasdaq only in September.
“Nine months past our successful IPO, this Kiavi transaction is a further pole vault into tokenization, first-lien diversification and our agentic AI platform,” chief executive Michael Tannenbaum said when the deal was announced. As Sandmark reported in February, Figure’s tokenization drive had already been lifting marketplace volumes before the Kiavi move.
The figures are preliminary and unaudited, and the note terms will firm up when the offering prices.
