Blockchain billionaire emerges from Figure’s post-IPO surge

[NEW YORK] It took him a few tries, but Mike Cagney is now a billionaire.

Shares of blockchain-based lender Figure Technology Solutions have soared almost 40 per cent since Thursday’s (Sep 11) initial public offering (IPO), making him the latest in a recent surge of newly minted crypto-related billionaires.

Cagney’s ambitions for the New York-based company are as lofty as his newfound wealth: He said he sees Figure as key player in the next wave of blockchain-powered businesses.

“I view it as analogous to the Magnificent Seven of Web 2.0,” Cagney, 54, told Bloomberg TV Thursday after the debut. “I think there’s going to be the equivalent in Web 3.0 and I think we’re one of those companies.” 

It’s the second company co-founded by Cagney that’s gone public, but the first to propel him into the billionaire ranks with a net worth of US$1.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is valuing his fortune for the first time. The majority of his wealth – which includes options held by his wife – is tied up in his Figure shares, along with a co-founding stake in SoFi Technologies, which Bloomberg’s valuation assumes he sold after stepping down in 2017.

Thursday’s IPO raised US$787.5 million, giving the company a market value of about US$6.6 billion. Its shares were up 12 per cent to US$34.84 as at 1 pm in New York.

A spokesperson for Figure declined to comment on Cagney’s net worth, while SoFi didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Active role

Cagney started Figure in 2018 with his wife, chief operating officer June Ou, 60, to facilitate loans on the blockchain, starting with home equity lines of credit. He served as chief executive until 2024 before handing over the reins to Michael Tannenbaum, the former chief operating officer of fintech Brex and former chief revenue officer of SoFi during Cagney’s tenure. Tannenbaum, 37, holds Figure shares and stock options worth US$228 million, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index. 

Cagney remains New York-based Figure’s executive chairman and said he still plays an active role in the product pipeline as a director. He maintains more than 72 per cent of the company’s voting power through sole ownership of its Class B stock, which has 10 times the voting clout of its common shares.  

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“There’s a lot of empirical research out there that founder-led companies outperform, and it’s important to keep the founder DNA within the business,” Cagney said in the Bloomberg TV interview. 

Cagney studied economics and earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He first worked at Wells Fargo & Co in 1994 as an analyst, then managed its financial products group, according to his LinkedIn profile. In the dot-com boom, he started his first company, Finaplex, a wealth-management platform acquired by Broadridge Financial Solutions in 2007.  

In 2010, while studying as a Sloan Fellow at Stanford University, he and his co-founders incubated SoFi, an online lender that initially focused on student loans. As SoFi’s CEO, Cagney helped raise US$1 billion in 2015 from investors led by SoftBank Group, which at the time was one of the largest private rounds of capital for a startup. As a side gig, he also co-founded a hedge fund for family offices, Cabezon Investment Group, which he ran for a decade before eventually selling it to SoFi.

“Clear adherence”

Cagney resigned from SoFi in 2017 following several workplace controversies, including allegations of misconduct and a toxic work environment. He later admitted that he’d had consensual sexual relationships with female subordinates. 

“One of the biggest takeaways is that at SoFi, we grew so fast and we never really understood what we were going to grow into, and culture never took a front seat,” Cagney told Bloomberg in 2019. 

Figure is the latest in a string of crypto-related IPOs that have outperformed this year. Stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group jumped 168 per cent on its first trading day in June, with co-founder Jeremy Allaire’s net worth US$2.7 billion as of Thursday’s close, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index. Brokerage app Webull, which offers prediction bets on crypto prices, made both its co-founders billionaires after its stock soared 500 per cent in its first days of trading.

Gemini Space Station, the crypto exchange led by brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, raised US$425 million in a double-digits-oversubscribed offering expected to begin trading Friday. At the US$28 IPO price, the co-founders’ combined stake is worth about US$2.2 billion, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index. BLOOMBERG