Figure Acquires Kiavi for $717M to Push Blockchain Lending Into Mainstream Real Estate
Figure Technology Solutions has agreed to buy residential real estate lender Kiavi for $717 million, a deal the blockchain-native capital markets firm says will add $7 billion in annual loan volume to its on-chain marketplace and deepen access to tokenized private credit for investors worldwide.
The agreement, announced June 10, 2026, gives Figure (Nasdaq: FIGR) control of Kiavi's technology and operating platform. A separate joint venture between Figure and global investment firm Sixth Street will acquire Kiavi's existing balance sheet loans, keeping Figure's own capital exposure light. Kiavi originated $7.8 billion in loans in 2025 and has funded more than $30 billion since its founding in 2013, making it one of the largest non-bank lenders to residential real estate investors in the United States. The company was originally founded under the name LendingHome by Matt Humphrey and James Herbert before rebranding as Kiavi.
The Deal Structure
In February 2026, months before the acquisition was announced, Kiavi closed a $350 million residential transition loan securitization that was five times oversubscribed, unlocking up to $1.2 billion in additional funding capacity and signaling strong institutional demand for its product well ahead of the deal.
Kiavi specializes in two loan categories: fix-and-flip loans (known as Residential Transition Loans) and long-term rental loans priced on debt service coverage ratios. The company reported roughly $250 million in revenue and about $100 million in EBITDA for full-year 2025. At $717 million, the purchase price works out to approximately 0.1 times Kiavi's annual origination volume. Analysts have described that multiple as reflecting the value of the operating platform rather than purely of the underlying loan book.
Sixth Street, already a long-standing partner of Figure, will hold the balance sheet risk through the joint venture structure. Michael Dryden, Partner and Head of Asset-Based Finance at Sixth Street, welcomed the arrangement: "As long-standing partners of Figure, we are proud to continue working together as Kiavi joins the Figure platform. We are pleased to be contributing our residential mortgage and private credit expertise to support Kiavi's growth as a leading originator."
Once integrated, Kiavi is expected to channel more than $100 million per month into Figure's Democratized Prime marketplace, a blockchain-native warehouse lending platform that connects loan originators with institutional capital. Figure projects 40 percent or greater first-lien loan volume for full year 2027 and reaffirmed a medium-term EBITDA margin target of 60 percent, with an unlevered cash payback period of under four years.
The deal also marks the first live deployment of Adaptor, Figure's agent-to-agent AI onboarding product.
Figure's Position in RWA Tokenization
Figure claims 75 percent market share in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. RWA tokenization refers to the process of representing ownership of physical or financial assets, in this case mortgage loans, as digital tokens on a blockchain. Figure operates primarily on Provenance Blockchain, a purpose-built public chain for financial services, and has originated more than $25 billion in home equity loans on-chain to date. In December 2025, Figure also launched an RWA Consortium on Solana in partnership with crypto firms, with on-chain originations already exceeding $1 billion per month, reflecting the company's increasingly multi-chain approach.
The broader RWA market has grown sharply. It surpassed $23 billion in mid-2025, expanded roughly 260 percent in six months, and stood at approximately $38.5 billion in May 2026. Tokenized private credit, the category Kiavi's loans are designed to fall into, currently generates yields in the 8 to 15 percent range annually, compared to under 5 percent for tokenized US Treasury products.
Figure CEO Michael Tannenbaum framed the acquisition as a major acceleration of the company's post-IPO strategy: "Figure is relentless in our pursuit of moving the capital markets onto blockchain rails, and nine months past our successful IPO, this Kiavi transaction is a further pole vault into tokenization."
Mike Cagney, co-founder of Figure and previously co-founder of SoFi, offered broader context for the company's ambition: "Blockchain is a big idea, but the on-chain capital markets are in their infancy. Figure needs to make bold moves to bring entire asset classes on chain."
Figure went public on Nasdaq in September 2025 at a valuation of approximately $7.6 billion and reported 113 percent year-over-year growth in its Consumer Loan Marketplace in Q1 2026. Figure also operates $YLDS, described as the first SEC-approved yield-bearing public stablecoin, a product directly connected to the yield proposition underlying its marketplace strategy.
What It Means Outside the United States
The immediate loan book is entirely US residential real estate, but the structural implications reach further. Kiavi's monthly origination flow, once routed through Democratized Prime, will create a larger pool of dollar-denominated, yield-bearing instruments on a public blockchain. For investors in South Asia and Africa who seek dollar-denominated yield exposure, a high-yield private credit option on the same infrastructure as tokenized Treasuries represents a meaningful expansion of available product.
India's NRI diaspora, estimated at over 32 million people, actively seeks exposure to dollar-yield instruments. Platforms serving that community could increasingly connect into Figure's marketplace as the product scales. The combined addressable origination opportunity Figure has identified reaches roughly $200 billion annually, according to the company's own projections.
For developers building RWA infrastructure in Lagos, Nairobi, and Bengaluru, the Kiavi integration sets a concrete benchmark for production-grade origination-to-securitization pipelines. Projects like Goldfinch, which funds fintech lenders across Africa and Southeast Asia using on-chain credit, operate in the same conceptual space but at smaller scale. AudaCity, which tokenizes Nigerian logistics assets, is a more locally specific example of the same infrastructure ambition and one that developers in Lagos may find directly comparable.
Caution is warranted. Figure's structure depends on US regulatory frameworks and deep institutional private credit markets. Replication in Nigeria, Kenya, or India requires navigating the CBN, CMA, and SEBI respectively, none of which have mature RWA frameworks in place. Legal enforceability of on-chain contracts also remains an open question across most emerging-market jurisdictions.
What Comes Next
The transaction is expected to close following customary conditions. BCG has projected, according to industry analysis, that the global RWA tokenization sector could reach $16 trillion by 2030. Whether Figure, currently the dominant player, can extend that lead while also providing an on-ramp for non-US capital and developers will be one of the more consequential questions in blockchain finance over the next two years.