How Figure turned a lending business into a financial network

Figure [FIGR] released its second-quarter earnings, showing that $1 billion in loan applications were flowing through its platform every week by early July. It’s a milestone that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago, when Figure was still largely viewed as a digital lender using blockchain to make HELOCs (Home Equity Lines of Credit) faster. The business looks different now.

In Q2’26, Consumer Loan Marketplace volume jumped 132% to $4.3 billion. Figure Connect, its blockchain-based marketplace for private credit, accounted for $2.8 billion of that volume. The company added 102 origination partners during the quarter, taking the total to 489, and expects $4.8 billion to $5.2 billion in marketplace volume in Q3.

Those numbers show how Figure has spent the last few years changing how it operates. It started by building a better way to originate loans. Then it built infrastructure to move those loans into capital markets. After that, it opened those rails to other originators. And now AI is becoming another important layer in that system.

In a nutshell, Figure is turning lending and capital markets into a structured system and is now making that system intelligent and programmable.

Figure was never really trying to stay a lender

Figure’s history makes it easy to put the company in a HELOC-shaped box. However, its lending business was increasingly becoming an entry point rather than an end goal.

The firm launched its own retail HELOC business in 2018 before moving toward a B2B model, allowing outside originators to use its technology. That eventually became Figure Connect, its marketplace for private credit. And the economics changed with it.

…