Blend Labs - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Fourth consecutive quarter of YoY revenue growth and non-GAAP operating profitability; Q2 revenue was $31.5M (+10% YoY) with non-GAAP operating margin of 15% as platform focus and cost discipline continued to show through.
• Record RPO of $190.4M (+$32.3M QoQ), underpinned by 23 new/expanded deals (including three IMBs) and a May $50M renewal/expansion; management emphasized accelerating sales momentum and multi-product platform wins.
• Against S&P Global consensus, Q2 revenue modestly missed ($31.52M vs $31.93M*) and non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.00 vs $0.02*; EV/funded loan (EVPL) fell to $88 as expected and will face near-term headwinds to ~$85–86 in Q3 on onboarding a large strategic IMB deal, with exit-2025 in the mid-to-upper $80s.
• Q3 outlook: revenue $31.5–$33.5M and non-GAAP operating income $3.0–$4.5M, with HMDA market units of 1.16–1.26M (seasonal downtick expected in Q4); “Simplify Blend” steps advanced (Title365 sale agreement) and partnerships (Doma Upfront Title, PHH Rapid suite) deepen higher-margin platform model—key stock catalysts alongside record RPO and Rapid adoption.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Record RPO ($190.4M) driven by a healthy mix of new logos and expansions; CEO: “sales momentum accelerated in the second quarter, with 23 new or expanded deals…reinforcing Blend’s position as a long-term, multi-product platform partner”.
  • Consumer Banking Suite revenue +43% YoY to $11.4M, expanding mix to 36% of software revenue; management sees strong pipeline and strategic diversification benefits.
  • Non-GAAP operating margin of 15% (vs -19% a year ago) and non-GAAP gross margin 76% (vs 71% LY), reflecting platform focus and cost actions.

• What Went Wrong

  • Small miss vs S&P consensus: revenue $31.52M vs $31.93M* and non-GAAP diluted EPS $0.00 vs $0.02*; GAAP diluted EPS was a $(0.03) loss.
  • EVPL fell to $88 as expected and will be pressured near term (~$85–86 in Q3) due to a large strategic IMB deal with lower upfront pricing, before trending higher with Close and Rapid Refi attach over time.
  • Cash used in operations of $(5.3)M and free cash flow of $(9.0)M in Q2 (vs positive in Q1) as working capital and capex stepped up; cash and marketable securities ended at $93.3M, no debt.

Transcript

Speaker 6

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Blend Labs, Inc. Second Quarter 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the call over to Meg Nunnally, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Good afternoon and welcome to Blend's financial results conference call for the second quarter of 2025. I'm Meg Nunnally, Blend's Head of Investor Relations. Joining me today is Nima Ghamsari, our Co-Founder and CEO, and Amir Jafari, our Head of Finance and Administration. Before we start today's call, I'd like to note some of the statements on our call will be forward-looking. We also refer to certain non-GAAP measures, which are reconciled to GAAP measures in today's earnings release and in the appendix to our supplemental slides. Non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for GAAP results. Unless otherwise stated, all financial measures we'll discuss today, including our profitability, refer to non-GAAP.

Also, certain statements made during today's conference call regarding Blend and its operations, in particular its guidance for the third quarter and full year 2025, and expectations about our markets, our strategic investments, product development plans, and operational targets may be considered forward-looking statements under the federal securities laws. The company cautions you that forward-looking statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties and a number of factors, many of which are beyond the company's control, could cause actual results, events, or circumstances to differ materially from those described in these statements. Please see the risk factors we've identified in our most recent 10-K, 10-Q, and other SEC filings. We are not undertaking any commitment to update these statements if conditions change, except as required by law. All comparisons made in the course of this call are against continuing operations for the same period in the prior year unless otherwise stated.

Lastly, we'll be providing a copy of our prepared remarks on our website by the conclusion of today's call, and an audio replay will also be available soon after the call. I'll now turn the call over to Nima.

Speaker 1

Hello everyone. This is our second quarter earnings call, and it's the middle of 2025, but it feels like an annual call since this is our fourth consecutive quarter of solid results. We've now posted four quarters of year-over-year total revenue growth and four quarters of non-GAAP operating profitability. I did want to take a moment to acknowledge the news we released earlier today regarding the leadership transition. I want to thank Amir for his contributions. He took us on the hard work of navigating the company through a challenging period and has set us on a path towards a brighter future. We wish him great success in his future endeavors.

Our strong results today are a reflection of the hard work we did in 2023 and the first half of 2024 to get our house in order and refocus on our strength as a platform company with our simplified Blend strategy. We turned the corner around the middle of 2024 and entered 2025 ready to execute. There are three key areas I'd like to highlight where we feel very confident and excited for the future. One, expanding our market share with new logos. Two, expanding take rate with existing customers. Three, growing consumer banking to diversify our revenue base. Our sales momentum accelerated in Q2 with 23 new or expanded deals, which is double Q1. This growth was driven by a healthy mix of new customer acquisitions and deep product expansions from existing customers, reinforcing Blend's position as a long-term multi-product platform partner.

In addition to the large expansion deal we previewed in May, we signed one additional seven-figure expansion. This figure also includes three net new logos in the independent mortgage bank, or IMB, vertical, where we've built a dedicated business unit that brings innovation and go-to-market under a single leader, allowing us to focus on this vertical and capture market share ahead of a market rebound. Taken together, these customer wins and expansions have propelled our remaining performance obligations balance, or RPO, to a new record for Blend of $190 million. Our sales momentum is helping us drive market share gains. For the customers we signed over the last 12 months, these new logos represent more than 80 bps of 2024 market volumes based on the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, or HMDA, data. Growing share directly translates into Blend revenue growth as new customers ramp.

Of the 17 mortgage customers we've signed in the last 12 months, six are already live and ramping on our platform. Even more exciting than our trend in new customers is our trend on churn. Our customer base always comes first, and we consider customer satisfaction and retention as essential to our success. Looking back, it's no secret that 2023 was a rough year for the mortgage industry, which was unprofitable and cutting costs by any means necessary. That year, we received churn notices from a decent number of customers going out of business or cutting costs. In 2024, that number declined by 70%. So far this year, seven months in, we have received zero churn notices from customers. The foundation of any vertical SaaS business is its customer base, and I feel momentum qualitatively, and I see momentum quantitatively in these numbers.

Getting to this point in the cycle wasn't easy, but now that we're here, we have a great foundation for the future to build market share with newly signed customers. Looking forward, on our last earnings call, I talked about the wave of customer inquiries we received in the wake of the announcement that Rocket Mortgage is acquiring Mr. Cooper. Lenders understand that consumers are looking for simplicity and personalization that comes from tech-enabled solutions. Blend can help lenders achieve this goal, and we're seeing both existing customers and prospects who are choosing to invest now to stay competitive rather than wait for the cycle to turn and potentially get caught flat-footed. To put some quantification around this, our current pipeline consists of a range of customers representing more than 4% of the 2024 HMDA market share.

In addition to growing our market share with new logos, we can also grow revenue by providing more value to our existing customers and in turn expanding our take rate with existing customers. As we help our customers succeed, we'll succeed and pass this down to shareholders. Within our mortgage suite, the main way we measure take rate is Economic Value Per Funded Loan, or EVPFL, which represents the per loan contractual rates we receive for mortgages and mortgage-related products. In the second quarter of 2025, our EVPFL was $88, which was in line with the forecast we provided in May. Our EVPFL is now near trough levels after our strategic move to simplify Blend and shift a set of formerly direct services, including home insurance, income verification, and finally title, to a lower revenue but higher margin partnership model.

We said in May that we expected the second quarter to be the trough for EVPFL, though Amir will talk in a minute about some of the near-term headwinds that may adversely impact third and fourth quarter numbers. Over the longer term, we continue to expect an upward trend in EVPFL as existing customers add new products and new customers launch with multi-product solutions. In the medium term, we believe the rollout of Rapid ReFi has the best potential to drive EVPFL expansion in our mortgage suite. We launched Rapid ReFi in February 2024 and discussed the product in some detail in our last earnings call. We believe Blend's Rapid ReFi solution is the industry's fastest, most automated, and hyper-personalized refinance solution. Customers are willing to pay more for Rapid ReFi because it drives better customer conversion, engagement, and loyalty.

The product is especially appealing to customers looking to prepare in advance of a market rebound. When volumes do recover, the mix shift towards our Rapid ReFi product has the potential to add an extra kicker to our EVPFL. Our focus today is on signing new customers so that we, both Blend and our customers, are ready if and when a ReFi wave comes. In the first half of 2024, we signed four customers with Rapid ReFi and we're just getting started. The other key product for driving EVPFL over the medium to long term is Blend Close. Blend Close product revenue nearly doubled this quarter compared to the second quarter of 2023. E-Close adoption is becoming widespread, especially as a low-friction add-on. We're finding that customers often want to include Blend Close in expansions, indicating it's viewed as an essential next step in mortgage modernization.

In addition to Rapid ReFi and Blend Close, our new ecosystem approach, as part of our simplified Blend strategy, is an avenue for long-term EVPFL expansion. One example of this is Upfront Title. We announced our Upfront Title partnership with Doma in July. Upfront Title is a solution that integrates a faster and more cost-effective title product directly into the Blend Platform. Since our pilot launch in 2024, we've already seen strong adoption with two major lenders, a top five bank and a top five servicer, and we have a large pipeline of interest. Beyond that, we have more that we're building behind the scenes that should increase our value to our customers and therefore drive up value per unit that we capture. I'll talk more about AI later, but this is an area where I see hundreds of dollars of opportunity per loan for us and our customer base.

Shifting gears, while we're working to gain share and expand our take rate within the mortgage suite, we're also seeing rapid growth in our consumer banking suite. Consumer banking represented 36% of total revenue in the second quarter of 2025, up from 28% one year ago. This mix shift is driven by the segment's rapid growth. Year-over-year growth in the second quarter was 43%. Out of the 23 wins and expansions we posted for the second quarter, 18 included core consumer banking or home equity products. Continued growth of our consumer banking suite is highly strategic to us, not only because of the revenue uplift, but also for diversification of revenue streams, which makes our business more stable over the long term. The pipeline for consumer banking continues to expand as well. Our open pipeline is up 18% year over year at the end of the second quarter.

Before turning the call over to Amir, I wanted to summarize where we are today and where we're going in the future. We've been through the gauntlet, but we're coming out the other side stronger, and we're committed to driving value for our customers and sustainable growth for shareholders. Our recent new customer wins, our progress on value-added products, and our growing consumer banking business all give us confidence on the path forward. We're energized, excited, and staying ready to capitalize as volumes recover. One final topic I'd like to preview with you is the potential for AI to shape the future of the industry. Blend is uniquely positioned as a technology leader with deep relationships in an industry that has historically been burdened with highly manual and time-consuming processes.

Legacy loan origination processes have many stare and compare moments, starting with initial documents that are submitted all the way up to post-close when quality control teams pour over the data once again. It's tedious, repetitive, and subject to human error, making it an excellent candidate for AI. Blend is currently piloting a new AI tool that fits across documents, data, and origination guidelines. The AI tool can identify gaps and potential discrepancies with lightning speed and efficiency. We view it like having the smartest underwriter sitting in the room and checking everything up front on every loan. By saving time and the painful back-and-forth process, we believe we can potentially save customers thousands of dollars while also capturing better economics for Blend. We'll be moving forward with the pilot and rollout and hope to share more in coming quarters. With that, I'll turn the call over to Amir.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Nima. I'd like to say that while I will be moving on from Blend, I'm extremely proud of what we've achieved during my time here. Everything we've done, including our simplified Blend strategy, has made Blend stronger. We cleared one of the final hurdles in implementing our simplified Blend strategy when we announced the signing of a definitive agreement to sell Title365 to Covius in June. We expect that transaction to close later this year, subject to regulatory approvals. With this transition, we are now fully aligned both operationally and strategically around a software-first model that scales through partnerships and platform innovation rather than owned services. With our simplified platform focus, we're staying ready to capitalize when volumes recover. Let's dive into the results. Total revenue in the second quarter of 2025 was $31.5 million, ahead of the midpoint of our guidance and up 10% year over year.

As Nima mentioned, this is our fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth. Growth was driven by a 43% increase in consumer banking suite revenue to $11.4 million and partially offset by a 3% decrease in mortgage suite revenue to $18 million. A 43% increase in consumer banking suite revenue was broad-based across all product lines, including core consumer banking products like deposit account openings, credit cards, and vehicle loans, as well as home equity lending products, which are included in our consumer banking suite. Overall volumes for our mortgage suite were roughly flat year over year. A 3% decrease in mortgage suite revenue was primarily driven by lower EVPFL, which was $88 for the second quarter of 2025 versus $97 a year ago. We, of course, anticipated lower EVPFL as a consequence of our shift to a platform model.

This accounted for $5 of the step down as we decreased low margin add-on product revenue by $12 per loan and increased high margin partnership revenue by $7 per loan. To reiterate, our focus is to optimize the operating profit and margins of these partnership transitions. Total revenue also includes $2.1 million of professional services revenue in the second quarter. Shifting back to consolidated results, our total gross profit was $23.3 million. After excluding stock-based compensation and capitalization of amortized software, our non-GAAP gross profit was $24 million, and our non-GAAP gross margin was 76%, up from 71% in the second quarter of 2024. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $19.3 million, down $6.6 million year over year. Non-GAAP operating income was positive $4.7 million, above the midpoint of our guidance and representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 15%. This is our fourth consecutive quarter of positive non-GAAP operating income.

Free cash flow for the quarter was negative $9 million, which compares to negative $5.1 million in the same quarter last year. Our balance sheet remains strong thanks to the work we did in 2024 to clear away debt and realign the cost structure of the business for sustainable growth. As of June 30, 2025, we had approximately $93.3 million of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities inclusive of restricted cash. Year to date, through June 30, we repurchased approximately 1.3 million shares worth more than $4 million. As of June 30, we had $20.9 million remaining under our repurchase authorization, and we continue to view this as an opportunity for further capital allocation given current stock trading levels. Next, I want to provide some additional color on EVPFL and RPO.

EVPFL for the second quarter came in at $88, which is in line with the guidance we provided in May. EVPFL has been coming down in recent quarters due to our strategic decision to sell and transition to a partnership model for our homeowner insurance and income verification businesses as part of our simplified Blend strategy. We have previously said that we expect the second quarter of 2025 to be a trough as we're moving past a strategic transition headwind. While we are indeed near trough levels, we have another near-term headwind that we expect to impact EVPFL for the rest of 2025. This near-term headwind is primarily related to a large strategic deal we signed with a top five IMB that has lower upfront pricing. The size, scope, and long-term nature of this deal made it more than worth the near-term drag on EVPFL.

With this in mind, we expect third quarter EVPFL to be approximately $85 to $86, and we'd expect to exit 2025 near the mid to upper $80s. Longer term, we still expect uplift from value-added products as Nima discussed. Shifting to RPO, for the second quarter, RPO set another record, coming in at $190 million. This is up from $158 million in the first quarter of 2025. As a reminder, RPO stands for Remaining Performance Obligations. This balance represents commitments and minimums in customer contracts for services expected to be provided in the future that have not been recognized as revenue. Before I turn to guidance, I'd like to offer some commentary on industry volumes. As a reminder, we use HMDA data as our benchmark for total market size.

We believe this bottoms-up data set represents the best way we can understand how our business is performing within the market in a detailed way. For 2024, HMDA mortgage volumes were approximately $4 million. For full year 2025, we're estimating market volumes of $4.24 to $4.64 million, representing year-over-year growth of 5% to 15%. We've been giving these estimates on a quarterly basis. As previously noted, we estimated first quarter 2025 market volumes were 800,000 to 900,000 units, and second quarter volumes were 1.15 to 1.25 million. Our estimate for the third quarter is 1.16 to 1.26 million units, which at the midpoint represents quarter-over-quarter growth of approximately 0.8%. We'd expect a slight volume downtick between Q3 and Q4, in line with normal seasonal patterns. Our current expectation for the fourth quarter is 1.13 to 1.23 million units.

Now turning to our financial expectations for the third quarter, we expect total revenue between $31.5 million and $33.5 million, with the midpoint representing a year-over-year decline of 2%. Our total non-GAAP operating income is expected to be between $3 million and $4.5 million. We've previously said we expect full-year non-GAAP operating expenses to be in the range of $85 million to $90 million. We're actively making adjustments to the business in response to ongoing pressure in the mortgage market that could result in operating expenses coming in below that range. We'll be able to provide further updates on our next earnings call. Now let's take your questions.

Speaker 6

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Dylan Tyler Becker with William Blair. Dylan, please go ahead.

Hey guys, appreciate it here. Maybe Nima, starting with you. I know there's been a little bit more near-term rate volatility and some kind of pump fakes on origination volumes over the past few years here, but wonder how you're kind of thinking about the factors that are contributing to potential unlock of overall volumes, whether rates, pricing, supply, et cetera, and what you're hearing there. Maybe pairing that with the momentum you guys are seeing in the home equity product on the consumer side that maybe makes you a little bit more insulated regardless of which directions rates move.

Speaker 1

Yeah, thanks for the question, Dylan. A couple of things I'd say, the small rate movements make a big difference in our customers' volume bases. We've seen that a few times. Late 2024, we saw that once, and then even recently when rates came down on Friday because of the jobs report, we saw that as well. On the one hand, it's something we pay very close attention to, but on the other hand, it's something that's out of our control. The things that are in our control are one of the things that you called out, which is a budding home equity business. I talked about Rapid ReFi in my prepared remarks, but another one of our rapid products is Rapid Home Equity, which is a far more automated, far higher conversion home equity product that we're really excited about. It's getting great uptake from our customers.

They really love the concept of giving someone a real home equity offer that they can really act on in the moment. It creates more value for them, creates more value for us in turn. Not only are we seeing home equity volumes rebound, we signed a number of very large home equity lenders late last year and some this year. On top of that, we've been adding Rapid Home Equity as an add-on to existing home equity customers. In some ways, that's helping insulate us from the things that are out of our control, like rate movements. I think we've kind of set ourselves up really well. The last thing I want to highlight as part of that is probably the most important, the thing that I really love the most about this year's numbers is how much we've stabilized our customer base in a time of turmoil.

That's the thing that sets us as a foundation, sets the foundation for us as a company to not just take advantage of the rate rebound, but come out much stronger when rates do come down. The fact that we have basically, I shouldn't say basically, we have zero churn this year, churn notices this year from customers. That's quite a feat for any software company, let alone a software company in this space, as volatile as the mortgage industry. Very excited about that and something that I, we really hang our hat on because we've stayed customer focused. We've made sure we do right by our customers. It doesn't mean we're perfect, but we always follow through on the things that we say we're going to do, as best that we can, and our customers all know that we care about them.

Certainly. I agree wholeheartedly with that. That makes sense. Thank you. Maybe Amir, switching over to you on the per funded loan metrics. I do think with a large customer, kind of working with them from an economic perspective makes sense with the near-term step down there. Could you maybe remind us the puts and takes of what that kind of implementation and ramp can look like over time as maybe they start onboarding and adopting more products and how we could think about the pace of recovery as Rapid ReFi and a handful of these other solutions start to contribute more materially due to the higher RPO uplift there. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Absolutely. Thanks, Alan, for the question. I'll start with the same component as what Nima mentioned, which is for the customer that we signed and this ability to, in essence, not just keep the customer, but enable us to grow with them. We brought a very large customer on board. That customer, in terms of your question of ramp, they're already a large customer. In the short term, what you'd see is, in essence, the headwind that we discussed, which is the pressure on our Economic Value Per Funded Loan. For this customer and for our other customers, the expansion for us on EVPFL will come from two components.

It will come from not just the ramp of the mortgage solution, which is where we always start, but it will come from then the adoption of Close, which we've shared is highly accretive to us and very, just very beneficial for both Blend and obviously our customers. Lastly, as it pertains to what you've already noted yourself, we have shared and we believe Rapid ReFi for what we're seeing in the market today, not just in terms of timing, but also in terms of its value components, will be the second component that allows us to become much more tailwind centric, I'm sorry. In essence, allow us to regrow and get EVPFL back to a growth rate.

Great. Thank you both.

Speaker 6

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan John Tomasello with KBW. Ryan, please go ahead.

Hi everyone, thanks for taking the questions. Nice to see the strong sales momentum. Regarding the 23 deals you called out in the third quarter, can you say what the mix was in terms of new logos versus expansion? On the new logo front, it sounds like Nima, you're seeing traction there, but just any way to quantify, you know, if you're seeing that mix of new logos in terms of deals quarter to quarter increase. Lastly, just on the IMB logos you called out, I think three new logos signed in the quarter here. Any context on what drove those wins, specifically if those were competitive takeaways? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yeah, in many cases, I'll start with the IMB question first. In many cases, those are competitive takeaways because, you know, it's taken a lot for us to get to this point in the cycle where we're not just stable, but we're innovating quite a bit. You know, we mentioned Rapid ReFi, but that's one piece. We're investing heavily in Blend Close. We're investing heavily in our core platform. Our customers really appreciate that. You know, they want a partner who can innovate through the ups and downs in the market. I think we've shown that we're resilient and we will do that. We'll keep building things. I mean, one of the most common things I hear about software providers in the industry is, you know, they stopped innovating. They let their technology get stale.

They look at this AI wave as something, you know, that our customers look at as something they can really benefit from, but tech companies in this space aren't really being able to take advantage of it in the way that they should. I think a lot of that is our resilience is what has led us to this point in the cycle with the IMBs. I think layering that on top of the fact that we now have a dedicated business unit. One thing about IMBs, and you probably know this, Ryan, is they're very, very idiosyncratic. They're a little different than a bank or a credit union, or maybe a lot different in some cases. They have unique needs. They're very different in how they operate, how they track their P&L, what things are important to them, which is why we stood up a dedicated IMB business unit.

That dedicated IMB business unit includes the ability to build product, the ability to support our customers, the ability to sell to our customers or prospects. That's really driven a lot of, I guess, positive momentum with the IMBs from us. They feel more than ever that we care about them. We've always cared about them, but now they get to feel it and see it firsthand and have a dedicated team that they get to work with. I think that's been a really, a very positive story for Blend and one that I think this market with the IMBs, it's such a big market, such an interesting market, and one that now we have this focused unit. I think we can take a focused effort at continued expansion there. As for a breakdown of new logos versus, you know, expansions, we don't share that. We haven't shared that number.

I think one thing that's been surprising to me has been how much, you know, through the first half of 2024, it was very hard to sign new logos because people were still in cost-cutting mode. Now not only are we getting new existing customers to expand, but our pipeline is very good. The customers we signed this year, the new logos we brought on this year, we've announced a number of them publicly, in fact, are some big names. Of course, smaller ones go along with it. These are companies that maybe took 2023 and the first half of 2024 off, and now they're coming back to the table and saying, "Hey, it looks like the market's going to recover imminently.

Let's get in front of that." It's one of the things that, you know, layered on with all the other good things that I said that I'm excited about, gives me a lot of promise for the industry's future and obviously Blend's part in it.

Great. Amir, I think, apologies if I missed this in your prepared remarks, but I think you've previously been guiding to a rule of 40 by the end of this year. Is that still the case or anything notable to call out in terms of changes on that front? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Hey Ryan, thanks for the question. We're not in a position to make any changes yet. We're obviously monitoring the macro in its own aggregate. There's a lot of movements, not just to your question, but to what Dylan mentioned earlier. We expect to be able to come back in the next quarter and just reaffirm or obviously change or update our perspective.

Thanks for taking the questions.

Speaker 6

If you would like to ask a question, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Aaron Jacob Kimson with Citizens. Aaron, please go ahead.

Great, thank you guys. Nima, I want to start with a bigger picture question. I think it's topical with the release of GPT-5 today at SaaS companies trading off in your vertical software background at Palantir and Blend. What do you think about the relative positioning of vertical software vendors versus horizontal vendors in an agentic AI world, specifically in financial services?

Speaker 1

Yeah, the thing about vertical software that makes it so special is that you can get real results as a customer very quickly. Some of the customers that we announced, putting aside AI for a second, some of the customers we announced earlier this year or last year are already live and ramped and doing a ton of volume, including a top 10 bank. Something that we're super proud of is that because it's vertical software, because it's purpose-built for this industry and for this use case, it allows for much more rapid ROI for our customers. That's one piece. I think vertical software in general is superior in a lot of ways for that reason versus going into a horizontal platform and completely having to customize it from scratch to serve a use case that's the same across hundreds or thousands of institutions.

With AI, it becomes even more acute because the purpose of AI, agentic AI, is going to be, in this industry, my belief is going to be to take a lot of the things that are operationally very manual for our customers that drives up costs for our customers and ultimately for consumers. It's going to make those things much faster and easier. A simple example would be, humans have to go and look at appraisals and look for three exterior photos and three interior photos. That's something that AI can do extremely well. There are thousands of those examples per loan. When you're thinking about how to make this industry modern and efficient, really the only way is something that can handle this level of unstructured complexity and bring simplicity to it. It has to be purpose-built for this industry in order to do that.

Otherwise, every single lender is going to be building the same prompts, the same agents, the same tools for the same use case from scratch. It's hard to maintain because those rules change as Fannie and Freddie and others update their guidelines as regulations change. It's very important. I think vertical software companies are well positioned to deliver outcomes faster with AI. Hopefully Blend is no exception.

That's really helpful perspective. Thank you. Amir, thanks for everything as well. I guess one last question on the public call for you. It's great to see the strong consumer banking growth again this quarter at 43%. Trying to quantify Dylan's question a little bit. I should at least think about the home equity component of the consumer banking line, its contribution to growth coming in above the top end of the CAGR range again in 2Q, and the possibility that ELOCs will be included in the mortgage revenue line in the future so we can better understand the core consumer revenue.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Aaron. Let me double-click into that by just breaking it down into a few pieces. First, as it pertains to home equity, there's a seasonal aspect that we've spoken to, and you're seeing that uptick from a quarter-over-quarter perspective. Second, we've continued to not just add from the core home equity application, but in essence, our rapid home equity. We're seeing that gain traction, which implies that our market share and overall what we're able to achieve has been increasing. Hence the increase that you see relative in the consumer banking numbers. Embedded in those numbers as well, though, is our success as it pertains to non-home equity, so deposits and the other core components, credit cards, auto, and so on and so forth.

It's the function that all of those are, in essence, executing right now, which is why we were able to execute to what we did in Q2. On a perspective basis, to now correlate it to your question as it pertains to what Dylan mentioned, there will be a point in time where, again, as you see a very large retirement and stabilization of mortgage and refi, we expect home equity to somewhat stabilize. You'll see, in essence, one side versus another. We feel very good because of the market share that we have in home equity, the expansion through rapid home equity, which is really allowing us to drive price uplift. Lastly, our ability to just, you know, bring that together from a whole suite of solutions to just power what we do today.

Thank you.

Speaker 6

Again, if you would like to ask a question, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Joe Vafi with Canaccord Genuity. Joe, please go ahead.

Thank you. This is Pallav Saini on for Joe. Thanks for taking the question. I just have one. Nima, you talked about the opportunities in AI and what you can do there for your clients. How should we think about the investment that's needed to get there?

Speaker 1

Good question. I would say to start with, we're very early in our AI journey. I want to couch my answer with that in mind. One of the things that makes AI very helpful for us is not only the use cases and outcomes that it can drive for our customers, but it's also making us more efficient as an organization using the AI tools internally. We use it across our entire product lifecycle. We use it across every aspect of how we work with creating materials, content. It's making us more efficient. Even building AI tools is getting more efficient by the day. I don't know if you saw, but an hour ago or so, OpenAI released GPT-5. Those kinds of things are only beneficial to our story and our ability to serve our customers and drive ROI.

While I don't have an exact investment number for you, I can say in aggregate, it's making our company better and more efficient, and it will make our customers' lives better and more efficient as well.

Thanks for the color. That's all for me.

Speaker 6

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