Better Mortgage’s parent company is moving to take advantage of a surge in investor interest by raising up to $75 million in a share offering that the company says could help it quadruple its mortgage originations to $2 billion a month.
Shares in Better, which hit an all-time low of $7.71 on Jan. 13, soared to $94.06 on Sept. 22 following a bullish endorsement by EMJ Capital founder Eric Jackson — the activist investor whose interest in Opendoor Technologies helped drive that company’s stock rally and CEO ouster in August.
Shares in Better Home & Finance Holding Co. retreated last week to close at $53.02 on Friday, Sept. 26. But that’s still an attractive price for Better to raise money at by issuing more than one million shares, the company announced Monday.
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The $75 million “at-the-market” raise will help Better boost the capacity of warehouse lending facilities, which currently limit its loan originations to about $500 million a month, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Quadrupling lending capacity to as much as $2 billion per month will help Better get the most out of two new agreements signed in September, the company said.
Better said it’s signed a partnership with a top five U.S. personal financial services platform, which will use Better’s Tinman AI platform to offer mortgages to more than 50 million customers.
Better also has a new agreement with a top five nonbank mortgage originator to use Tinman to originate home equity loans and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs).
Known for its technology, Better’s business boomed when homeowners rushed to refinance during the pandemic. But after funding $58 billion in loans in 2021, Better’s loan production dwindled to $11.4 billion in 2022 when mortgage rates rebounded, and bottomed out at $3 billion in 2023.
Better Mortgage eyes a return to glory days
Source: Better earnings reports.
Now Better executives are talking about scaling loan production back up to $2 billion a month — close to what the company achieved in the entire first half of this year.
Jackson’s investment thesis is that Better’s technology — including the Tinman loan origination, pricing engine and closing system and an AI customer service agent, “Betsy” — will allow it to surpass lending volume it achieved during the refi boom with a much smaller workforce.
After it began laying off employees at the end of 2021, Better cut its workforce from a peak of 10,400 to just 950 by the time it went public in a 2023 merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
New York-based Better has slowly been staffing back up, beginning the year with 1,250 team members, an 88 percent reduction from peak headcount. But Better has racked up $2 billion in losses to date, including an $86.8 million net loss during the first six months of 2025.
In reporting a $36 million second quarter loss, company executives said they retired $521 million of convertible debt with Softbank and were focused on reaching profitability by the end of Q3 2026, as measured by adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).
Shares in Better were up by as much as 22 percent Monday morning, to $64.50, before giving up some of those gains. At $920 million, the value of all of Better’s outstanding shares Monday afternoon was up 581 percent from the beginning of the year, when the company’s market capitalization was $135 million.
Blockchain-based home equity lender Figure Technology Solutions Inc. has a market capitalization of more than $8 billion following strong investor demand for its shares in a Sept. 10 initial public offering.
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