Vesta raises $30 million for AI mortgage lending software

Mortgage software startup Vesta said it raised $30 million in a funding round led by Conversion Capital, bringing its funding to date to $85 million. The company uses AI agents to automate tasks involved in originating home loans.

Three customers participated in the financing, including Pennymac and New American Funding. Citi Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz also invested. CEO Mike Yu founded Vesta with Devon Yang in 2020.

Yu said revenue was up 12x year over year and that Vesta had helped lenders originate more than $100 billion in loans annually. With market share still below 5%, he said the company intends to add staff and develop additional products, including a personal assistant that helps mortgage issuers carry out tasks and monitor workflows.

Lenders choose which jobs to delegate to Vesta’s agents. Yu said many initially require a person to approve the agents’ work, then allow them to handle some loans independently before expanding their use. Some lenders are already assigning mortgage underwriting decisions to the agents, he added.

Responsibility for underwriting remains with the lenders regardless of the technology they use, Yu said. He added that Vesta records the agents’ actions and decision reasoning for compliance checks and audits. The founders say the automation can reduce mortgage processing time and costs.