MPower Financing, a D.C. student loan startup, has raised an eye-popping $100 million round, the largest ever for the 7-year-old company.
The $100 million equity investment includes participation by Tilden Park Capital Management of New York and ETS Strategic Capital on behalf of ETS, a global nonprofit educational assessment, research and measurement company based in Princeton, New Jersey. Other investors include King Street Capital Management of New York; Drakes Landing Associates of Aspen, Colorado; and Bethesda's Pennington Alternative Income Management.
The latest infusion follows $30 million MPower raised earlier in 2021, also with participation from Tilden Park and ETS. It brings MPower's total raise to date to $160 million, including $9 million in summer 2020 and an investment from Halcyon Angels.
We've reached out to MPower for more information and will update this post when we hear back.
MPower, founded in 2014, works with more than 350 colleges and universities to provide loans to students from more than 200 countries who attend school in the U.S. and Canada, amounting to more than $2 billion in loan applications on its platform. CEO and co-founder Manu Smadja said the latest investment will help grow the company's team in Bangalore, India, and automate and scale the company's operations, as well as directly supporting students, including DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) students, for which it says it is a top lender.
MPower has doubled revenue each year since its inception and in January, Smadja told the Washington Business Journal's Sara Gilgore he expects to continue that pace for 2021 — and enter double-digit revenue. In June, the company added an instant loan decision product that provides students with an initial answer on a student loan within a few seconds of their application, Smadja announced on LinkedIn.
