Figure IPOs on NASDAQ, up 35%, as CFO Michael Tannenbaum unveils blockchain credit strategy

Summary

Figure Technologies went public on NASDAQ on September 11, 2025, with shares up 35% on the first day of trading. CFO Michael Tannenbaum, who previously served as Chief Revenue Officer at SoFi, spoke about the company and its IPO positioning on the day of listing.

Figure's core business is standardizing private credit on blockchain infrastructure, starting with mortgage. Tannenbaum describes the company as holding roughly 75% market share in real-world asset debt tokenization — a category also called RWA, or tokenized assets — within a $185 billion TAM. At present, Figure represents about 35 basis points of the overall private credit market, which Tannenbaum frames as early innings.

How the product works

Figure embeds into partner platforms via API. In the example Tannenbaum gives, Houzz — a home design marketplace — integrates Figure to let its customers take equity out of their homes to fund renovations. When a loan is originated, its attributes are hashed on a blockchain upfront, which eliminates repetitive verification as the loan moves through capital markets. The result, according to Tannenbaum, is a cost reduction of roughly $11,000 per loan out of $12,000 in total production costs, with closing time dropping from an industry average of 45 days to 5 days.

Figure works with approximately 170 partner brands that originate or tokenize assets on its platform. The go-to-market has evolved from direct-to-consumer, to embedded B2B, to a pure marketplace model.

IPO rationale

The IPO process took roughly six months, including what Tannenbaum describes as a more virtual, front-loaded road show compared to pre-COVID norms. The investor pitch rested on three points: a rare combination of growth and profitability, the scale of the addressable market, and Figure's position as one of the few blockchain companies generating real-world utility rather than speculative value.

Tannenbaum draws a direct parallel to SoFi's $1 billion raise from SoftBank in 2015 — the largest private capital raise of its kind at the time — which he and current Figure chairman Mike Cagney (SoFi's former CEO) executed together. His view is that a large capital raise at the right moment becomes a structural differentiator, and the IPO is designed to serve the same function for Figure.

10-year vision

Tannenbaum argues that Figure's integration between loan origination systems and capital markets is genuinely novel — most lenders still run separate underwriting and capital markets infrastructure. The longer-term ambition is to extend Figure's standardization layer across every private credit asset class beyond mortgage, effectively becoming shared rails for private credit at scale.