Vesta Raises $30M for AI Mortgage Software, Revenue Up 12x

What Happened

On Thursday, October 8, Vesta announced a $30 million funding round led by Conversion Capital. Three of the company's customers — including Pennymac and New American Funding — also invested in the round, alongside Citi Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. The company has raised $85 million to date. CEO Mike Yu said demand for the product has "exploded in the last year," making now the right time to staff up, take market share and invest in new product lines.

Vesta uses AI agents to automate much of the loan origination process. In the U.S., it takes around 40 days to close a mortgage at a cost of about $11,000 per loan — most of it human labor, with a major bottleneck being waiting for a person to review the loan. Vesta's idea is to let humans deploy a swarm of agents to speed up tasks: customers start an AI agent with a person approving its work, then let it handle a share of loans on its own. Yu said some lenders are using Vesta's AI agents to make underwriting decisions, with all actions and reasoning recorded for compliance and auditing. He credited the breakthrough to Claude Sonnet 4.5, which he said is far better than previous generations at adhering to instructions over long time horizons.

Key Facts

1. Round:$30 million led by Conversion Capital; $85 million raised to date.
2. Investors:customers Pennymac and New American Funding participated, alongside Citi Ventures and a16z.
3. Traction:revenue up 12x year over year; a U.S. mortgage takes ~40 days and costs ~$11,000 per loan.
4. Depth of deployment:some lenders already use its agents for underwriting decisions; all actions and reasoning are recorded and auditable.
5. Technical inflection:the CEO credits Claude Sonnet 4.5's adherence to instructions over long horizons as the breakthrough.