Career
Cagney grew up in Southern California and received a degree in applied economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. [3] In the 1990s, Cagney worked as a trader with Wells Fargo before leaving in 2000 to start Finaplex, a wealth management software company that was acquired by Broadridge Financial Solutions. He then founded Cabezon Investment Group, a global macro hedge fund that manages money from family offices, before taking a Sloan Fellowship at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2010. [4]
In 2011, Cagney and four fellow graduate students at Stanford Graduate School of Business created SoFi as a way to lower loan costs while providing a way for alumni to invest in students. [5] Stanford ran a pilot SoFi program, seeded with $2 million from 40 alumni and disbursed to 100 graduate business students. [6] By 2013, the company had funded $200 million in loans to 2,500 borrowers at 100 eligible schools. [7] By 2015, the company was offering mortgages in more than 20 states [8] and had funded more than $4 billion in loans. [9]
In 2015, Cagney raised a private financing for SoFi of over $1 billion, led by Softbank. It was the largest private financing ever done to that point. [10]
In 2016, Cagney was named to Business Insider’s Creators list of top 100 business visionaries creating value for the world. [11] By 2017, SoFi had a valuation of over $4 billion and had extended more than $20 billion in loans. [12] The company had also expanded its services to include mortgages, personal loans, wealth management services and life insurance. [13]
In September 2017, Cagney left SoFi after several workplace controversies, including allegations of misconduct and presiding over a toxic work environment. [14] [15] At the time of his resignation, Cagney said that the litigation and ensuing media coverage made his presence a distraction to the company’s mission. [14]
In 2018, Cagney and his wife, June Ou, co-founded fin-tech startup Figure Technology Solutions, which builds marketplaces to trade and finance blockchain-native assets. [16] Figure was the first company to put consumer loans on the blockchain. [17] The company has raised over $400 million since its launch with a valuation of $3.2 billion in 2021 [18] . As of 2019, the company had raised over $225 million and was valued at $1.2 billion. [19] By 2020, the company began offering securitizations backed by Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOC), including the largest bond backed by a HELOC in over a decade. [15] In August 2021, Figure Technology Solutions agreed to merge with Homebridge Financial Services, a mortgage lender. [20] In June 2022, the merger was cancelled. [21] In March 2024, Figure Technology Solutions spun off its Lending division by establishing a new parent entity, Figure Technology Solutions (FTS). [22] The company has funded over $16 billion in loans, reporting $340 million in revenue. [23] In 2024, Cagney split Figure into two companies, Figure and Figure Markets. [22] He became chairman of Figure and CEO of Figure Markets. [24] [25] Cagney raised $60 million for Figure Markets in a round led by Pantera and Faction with participation from Jump Crypto, Distributed Global, and other investors. [26] [27]
In 2025, the companies recombined, purportedly to go public. Cagney is executive chairman of the recombined company. [23] In the same year, Figure Markets went effective with the SEC as the first public security, a fixed-income stablecoin called $YLDS. [28] Figure Markets also launched a DeFi lending protocol called Democratized Prime in 2025, directly connecting lenders and borrowers. [29]
Cagney and Ou also founded Provenance Blockchain, a public proof-of-stake Layer 1 (L1) chain. In 2025, Provenance Blockchain was the largest public blockchain measured by real-world assets. [30]
