Vesta, an AI-native software startup focused on mortgage origination, announced Thursday that it raised $30 million in a round led by Conversion Capital. The company uses AI agents to automate much of the loan origination process, which co-founder and CEO Mike Yu says helps lenders cut both time and costs. Three customers, including Pennymac and New American Funding, also invested, alongside Citi Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.
Yu told TechCrunch that the timing was driven by surging demand: revenue is up 12x year over year, and the platform now helps lenders originate more than $100 billion in loans annually. Still, he noted the company holds under 5% market share, adding, "now is the time to staff up, take the market, and invest in new product lines." Those new products include a personal assistant for mortgage issuers that can handle tasks and track workflows.
The average U.S. mortgage takes about 40 days to close and costs roughly $11,000 per loan, with much of that cost tied to human labor and waiting on reviews. Vesta's approach lets customers deploy a swarm of AI agents to speed up tasks, with humans deciding how much autonomy to grant. Some lenders now use Vesta agents to make underwriting decisions, though Yu stressed that lenders remain responsible for those decisions and that all actions and reasoning are recorded for compliance and auditing.
Yu credited recent advances in AI models, particularly Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5, for enabling the complex, multi-stage automation. He said Vesta competes with legacy systems like ICE Mortgage Technology and other AI-native firms such as Xpanse, but argues incumbents were not built for AI agents, making it "very hard" to bolt them on. "Our priority is earning the business of the rest of the mortgage industry," Yu said. "Then, we'll go wherever our customers take us."