Fintech startup, SoFi plans to raise $500 million from Qatar, with no value brought over from 2017.


Anthony Noto
Anthony Noto

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported Social Finance, an Online lending company to be in talks with Qatar Investment Authority, with objectives to raise $500 million. This round of financing will value SoFi at $4.3 billion, which makes it a flat round from its valuation in 2017. Bloomberg reports Silver Lake as SoFi's primary fund raiser back in 2017, which pushed it to the same valuation of $4.3 billion in that year.

The report also says investors clinched to financial backups, in the event of SoFi being unable to raise enough money or ending up being acquiesced by another company. 

SoFi so far refused making any statement for confirmation of the whole deal.

SoFi is an online personal finance company that provides student loans, personal loans, stock trading options and checking, headed by Anthony Noto, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, and former chief operating officer of the popular social media company, Twitter. 

The round of financing this time around is huge, but by comparison is dwarfed by SoftBank's $1 billion investment in SoFi, back in 2015 (at two times the value of the current financing), which gave the company a good headstart -of an initial valuation of $2.6 billion. PitchBook also tells of SoFi raising money from G Squared in the December of 2018. 

Noto assumed office in 2018 following the departure of SoFi's founding CEO Mike Cagney, who faced sexual allegations at the company, forcing his resignation.

The New York Times reportedly led an investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct, of the then CEO Cagney, which brought to light events of the scandal.

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