Affirm

Affirm Holdings provides point of sale installment loans to consumers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, along with the Affirm Card, a savings account and checkout tools for merchants. It was founded in 2012 by Max Levchin, a co-founder of PayPal, together with Nathan Gettings, Jeffrey Kaditz and Alex Rampell, and is headquartered at 650 California Street in San Francisco. Its loans are originated through bank partners including Cross River Bank and Celtic Bank and funded through bank warehouse lines, forward flow sales and securitizations.

Affirm's IPO prospectus details its later private rounds. The Series E closed initially on December 6, 2017, raising $242.6 million at $11.34 per share; Jasmine Ventures, an affiliate of Singapore's GIC, bought about $150 million of it, with Founders Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Khosla Ventures and Levchin also participating. The Series F closed initially on March 22, 2019, raising $308.3 million at $13.18 per share, with Founders Fund and Thrive Capital each buying about $50 million and Lightspeed, Spark Capital and Jasmine Ventures also investing. The Series G closed initially on September 11, 2020, raising $435.1 million at $19.93 per share, while $75.3 million of April 2020 convertible notes converted into Series G-1 stock. Shopify also held a warrant over 15.2 million shares tied to a commercial agreement.

Affirm priced its IPO at $49.00 per share and began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker AFRM on January 13, 2021, raising about $1.2 billion. The shares roughly doubled on the first trading day. At the offering, holders of more than 5% included Jasmine Ventures (10.6%), Shopify (9.8%), Lightspeed (9.0%), Founders Fund (8.6%) and Khosla Ventures (6.7%). For fiscal 2026 Affirm reported revenue of $4.26 billion and gross merchandise volume of $50.2 billion, and as of August 2026 it had 27.8 million active consumers and 571,000 merchants. Its partners have included Amazon, Shopify, Apple Pay, Stripe and Costco; Walmart ended its relationship in 2025 in favor of Klarna.

Affirm shows how capital intensive consumer lending can still be financed with venture equity. Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed and Spark Capital were early holders, while GIC, Thrive Capital and Shopify came in at later, larger rounds. The company went public about nine years after founding. Its listing at $49 a share sat well above the $19.93 Series G price paid four months earlier, a gap that marked up the late stage round at the IPO.