Upstart is an AI lending platform that partners with banks and credit unions to provide consumer loans using non-traditional variables, such as education and employment, to predict creditworthiness.
 | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| |
| Industry | Financial technology |
| Founded | April 2012 |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | San Mateo, California, U.S. |
Area served | United States |
| Revenue |  US$514 million (2023) |
| US$−257 million (2023) | |
| US$−240 million (2023) | |
| Total assets |  US$2.02 billion (2023) |
| Total equity | US$635 million (2023) |
Number of employees | 1,388 (December 2023) |
| Website | upstart |
| Footnotes / references [1] | |
The founding team includes Dave Girouard, former President of Enterprise Google; Paul Gu, a Thiel Fellow; and Anna Counselman, former Manager of Global Enterprise Customer Programs and Gmail Consumer Operations at Google.[2]
Upstart first launched in April 2012 with an Income Share Agreement (ISA) product, which enabled individuals to raise money by contracting to share a percent of their future income. In May 2014, Upstart pivoted away from this product and toward the personal loan marketplace.[3] With this pivot, Upstart began offering a traditional 3-year loan, and has since expanded to offer a 5-year loan product as well.
Upstart developed an income and default prediction model to determine creditworthiness of a potential borrower. This means that in addition to traditional underwriting criteria—FICO score, credit report, and income—the Upstart underwriting considers education variables—colleges attended, area of study, GPA, and standardized test scores—and work history to develop a statistical model of the borrower's financial capacity and personal propensity to repay.[4]
Upstart raised a $1.75M seed round from First Round Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, New Enterprise Associates, Google Ventures, Crunchfund and Mark Cuban. They subsequently raised a series A round of $5.9M which included new investors Eric Schmidt (Google Executive Chairman), Marc Benioff, Khosla Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Founders Fund, and Collaborative Fund.[2] Upstart raised a Series C round of $35M from Third Point Capital in June 2015,[5] and $32.5M from Rakuten in 2017.[6] Upstart raised a Series D round of $50M from The Progressive Corporation in 2019.[7]
In late 2020, Upstart went public via an initial public offering.[8]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Upstart Holdings, Inc. 2023 Annual Report". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. February 15, 2024.
- ^ a b "About Upstart". Upstart. Retrieved December 20, 2012.
- ^ Ha, Anthony (August 8, 2014). "Former Google Executive Dave Girouard Launches Crowdfunding Service Upstart, Raises $1.75M". TechCrunch.
- ^ Keohane, Dennis (April 29, 2014). "Upstart keeps innovating lending models to finance the young and ambitious". BetaBoston.
- ^ Alex Konrad (July 16, 2015). "Upstart Ex-Googlers Raise $35 Million To Get Millennials More Access To Loans". Forbes.
- ^ Connie Loizos (March 2, 2017). "Millennial lender Upstart just raised $32.5 million to license its tech to other companies". TechCrunch.
- ^ Singh, Manish (April 8, 2019). "Upstart raises $50 million and partners with banks to expand its AI lending business". Retrieved January 9, 2021.
- ^ Hackett, Robert (December 18, 2020). "Upstart CEO talks major IPO 'pop', A.I. racial bias, and Google". Fortune. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
External links
edit- Official website
- Business data for Upstart Holdings, Inc.: