SoFi (Social Finance, Inc.) was founded in 2011 by Mike Cagney, Dan Macklin, James Finnigan, and Ian Brady while they were students at Stanford’s business school. The original idea was simple: use alumni money to refinance student loans at better rates. That worked, and SoFi expanded from there.
Today SoFi is a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: SOFI) with a national bank charter — it acquired Golden Pacific Bancorp in 2022, which gave it the ability to hold deposits and lend directly. That bank charter was a turning point. It meant SoFi no longer needed to rely on third-party banks, improving its margins significantly.
SoFi’s product range now covers personal loans, student loan refinancing, mortgages, auto loan refinancing, credit cards, checking and savings accounts, brokerage, robo-advisory, and crypto trading. The company also operates Galileo, a payment processing and banking-as-a-service platform that powers other fintechs, and Technisys, a core banking platform acquired in 2022.
The company hit a major milestone in Q4 2023 when it achieved GAAP profitability for the first time. By early 2024, SoFi had over 7.5 million members and $21 billion in deposits. Revenue for 2023 was approximately $2.1 billion. SoFi is headquartered in San Francisco with major offices in Salt Lake City, Montana, and Jacksonville.
