Mortgage paperwork is getting an AI makeover: Vesta raised $30 million to bring AI agents into one of finance's most document-heavy businesses

Vesta, a mortgage software company, raised a $30 million Series B on October 8. Conversion Capital led the round. Total funding now stands at $85 million, following a 2022 Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Three of Vesta’s lender customers invested: Pennymac, New American Funding and nbkc Bank. Lenders don’t often back the vendors they depend on, so their participation says something about their confidence. Citi Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz also took part, along with other investors.

CEO Mike Yu and CTO Devon Yang started the company in 2020. Both worked at Blend before that. The new money will go toward expanding its AI work and hiring.

What the agents actually do

Vesta sells a loan origination system. That’s the software a lender uses to carry a mortgage from application to closing. The company’s AI agents now handle document review, underwriting decisions, condition clearing and checks of closing packages.

The agents work inside the same system, on the same file, as loan officers and underwriters. They don’t sit in a separate tool. They record their reasoning, and they pass anything that needs human judgment back to a person.

Most customers begin with a person approving every action an agent takes. Later, they let the agent handle some loans alone. Lenders remain responsible for underwriting decisions, and every action is logged so it can be audited. Yu says older systems weren’t built with agents in mind, which makes adding them on top very hard.

What the numbers do and don’t show

Vesta says about 40% of tasks on its platform now go to agents and automated workflows. That’s the company’s own figure. It also counts tasks, not loans. One loan involves many tasks, so the number can’t tell you how much underwriting work is actually automated.

Pennymac reported a 25% cut in origination operating costs and about 50% efficiency gains for loan officers. Those results came before it switched on AI agents. They don’t measure what the agents add.

Yu also predicts that once origination is fully automated, borrowers will close in the legal minimum of seven days instead of 45. That’s a forecast from the company’s CEO.