Citi invests in mortgage platform Pylon

Mortgage infrastructure provider Pylon received a minority strategic investment from Citi and closed a deal to sell mortgages on its platform through the bank’s mortgage trading desk, the parties announced on Tuesday. 

Pylon, founded in 2022, has Peter Thiel, the co-founder and former CEO of PayPal, among its investors. The list also includes venture capital firms Conversion Capital, Allegis Capital, QED and Fifth Wall. 

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Pylon claims it has so far raised over $30 million in funding. 

Pylon delivers programmatic originations and capital through its enterprise-grade application programming interface (API), which serves wealth management, homebuilding, lenders, servicers and banks.

The mortgage platform claims it is “re-wiring every layer of mortgage, from capital markets to origination, into enterprise-grade APIs built from the ground up.” Pylon claims it has 25,000 loans per month supported by its team. 

Citi is investing in the company through Citi Ventures and the Spread Products Investment Technologies unit, dubbed SPRINT. This unit makes strategic equity investments in startups, focusing mainly on specialty lending, alternative investments, and real estate.  

A partnership between the companies will connect Citi’s mortgage trading desk directly to the Pylon platform, allowing Pylon customers to access Citi’s institutional-grade products and rates. 

“Our connectivity with Citi’s mortgage trading desk delivers the same unobstructed access to Wall Street that was previously only available to the largest market participants,” Trent Hedge, founder and CEO of Pylon, said in a statement. 

Hedge founded the company after creating Atmos, a custom homebuilding platform backed by Khosla Ventures, YC and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.