Vesta Raises $30M as Lenders Adopt AI Agents

Vesta, a startup that builds AI software for mortgage lenders, said on Thursday that it has raised a $30 million round led by Conversion Capital. The list of backers also includes three customers — Pennymac and New American Funding among them — plus Citi Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.

The company is trying to automate a business that still moves at a human pace. In the U.S., a mortgage can take about 40 days to close and cost around $11,000 per loan. Vesta’s pitch is that AI agents can take on parts of the origination process, helping lenders shave down both time and labor costs by letting humans supervise a swarm of software workers instead of doing every step themselves.

Mike Yu, who co-founded Vesta with Devon Yang in 2020 and now runs the company as CEO, said demand has “exploded in the last year.” He said revenue is up 12x year over year, and that Vesta has raised $85 million so far. Even with that traction, Yu says the company still has under 5% market share, which is why it wants to hire more and push into new product lines.

Those new products include a personal assistant for mortgage issuers that can handle tasks and track workflows. Some customers start with a human approving the agent’s work, then let the software handle a slice of loans on its own, then expand from there. Yu said some lenders are even using Vesta’s agents to make underwriting decisions, though the lenders still remain responsible for those decisions.

That last part matters. Vesta says it records both actions and reasoning for compliance and auditing, which is the kind of detail mortgage shops need if they’re going to let AI anywhere near a loan file. Yu also pointed to Claude Sonnet 4.5 as a key breakthrough, saying it was better than earlier models at following instructions over the long stretches these jobs require. For now, Vesta is going after the rest of the mortgage industry and, in Yu’s words, will go wherever customers lead it next.