May 5, 2022
Lev Announces $170 Million in New Funding from Parker89, Cross River Digital Ventures and Others
Since launching in 2019, the CRE transaction platform has grown to become one of the industry’s top 100 loan originators, having facilitated over $1.5 billion to date
NEW YORK, N.Y. - Lev, the digital commercial real estate (CRE) transaction platform, today announced $170 million in new funding. The company has closed a $70 million Series B round led by Parker89 and Cross River Digital Ventures with participation from NFX, Canaan, JLL Spark, Animo Ventures, Capital One Ventures, Citi Ventures and Citi SPRINT, StepStone Group and Blitzscaling Ventures. Additionally, Lev has secured $100 million in debt financing from Cross River’s Strategic Direct Lending Group. The new round brings Lev’s total funding to over $200 million.
Lev is transforming the CRE industry’s notoriously manual lending process into a beautiful digital experience. Its technology provides loan seekers with instant access to customized financing, based on their precise needs, from leading financial institutions. To date, Lev is closing CRE loans up to three times faster than existing methods, which take upwards of 100 days.
“Commercial real estate is one of the largest industries on the planet, and has somehow completely resisted the fintech revolution that has taken over virtually every other industry in the past decade,” said Yaakov Zar, CEO and co-founder of Lev. “We’ve been blessed with the right team, building the right products in a gigantic industry, and that’s the driver behind our continued growth. We’re honored to have the world’s best investors, as well as leading fintech, real estate and banking institutions helping drive development and adoption of our industry-defining technologies.”
With its new funding, Lev will continue to enhance its product offerings, recruit top talent across all departments, and double down on research and development for its marketplace and end-to-end lending experiences.
“Having witnessed the increasing digitization of the residential mortgage process over the past few years, we believe that commercial lending will undergo a similar evolution,” said Nate Levin, Managing Director at Parker89. “Yaakov and the Lev team are leading this charge, and we couldn’t be more excited to partner with them as they continue to reinvent the process.”
Lev’s new funding comes in the midst of a rapid growth period. In 2021, the company closed nearly $1 billion in CRE mortgages, growing 10x year-over-year thanks to their reimagined approach to CRE financing. Lev’s growth in the last year has put it among the top 100 CRE loan originators in just its second year of existence.
"Yaakov and his team have introduced technology to disrupt the last bastion of traditional lending that is resisting the wave of innovation,” said Gilles Gade, Founder, President and CEO of Cross River. “We’ve worked closely with Lev since our initial investment and are confident they will continue to revolutionize the CREF value chain and the way borrowers and lenders interact.”
About Lev
Lev is the commercial real estate financing platform offering fast, transparent access to capital from the world’s leading financial institutions. Having closed $1 billion in CRE mortgages in 2021, Lev has grown 10x year-over-year thanks to its proprietary approach to CRE financing, including the industry’s only API. Founded in 2019, Lev has raised over $200 million in funding from Parker89, Cross River Digital Ventures, NFX, StepStone Group, Canaan Partners, JLL Spark, Animo Ventures and Ludlow Ventures, among others. For more information, visit levcapital.com.
