Tidalwave – Lending platform for businesses
Tidalwave is rebuilding how Americans apply for a mortgage.
In the U.S., the average mortgage still takes 43 days to close and requires hundreds of manual data entry tasks. Lenders end up spending thousands of dollars per loan on inefficient workflows.
Tidalwave is an agentic AI mortgage point of sale platform founded by Diane Yu, Jack Deng, and Cheng Li. The team previously helped build FreeWheel, the adtech platform acquired by Comcast for about $375M, and led technology at Better and other fintech players.
Their AI agents handle verification, underwriting, and document collection with minimal human oversight. The goal is simple: shorten time to close, improve data quality, and take repetitive work off loan officers' plates.
Tidalwave has raised a $22M Series A led by Permanent Capital, with D.R. Horton and Engineering Capital joining the round, bringing total funding to $24M. With this capital, the company plans to power more than 200,000 loans annually, roughly 4% of the $1.46B U.S. mortgage origination market projected for 2026.
Direct integrations with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac deliver instant underwriting checks. Connections to Plaid, Argyle, and Truv provide real-time income, employment, and asset data. Freddie Mac research shows that digital automation of this type can cut origination costs by around $1,500 per loan while improving margins and borrower satisfaction.
Early adopters like NEXA Lending, First Colony Mortgage, and Mortgage Solutions are already moving to paperless, AI-driven flows that shave weeks off approval times.
As housing demand rebounds and lenders fight brutal margin pressure, an AI native mortgage application layer that truly moves the needle on time to close and cost per loan could capture a meaningful share. Tidalwave is one of the strongest contenders to do it.
#fintechoftheday #mortgage #AI #USA
Subscribe for Fintech of the Day. We handpick one fintech startup every day. Please don’t miss the next one and receive emails when new content is published!
