Fortune: Tidalwave raises $22 million Series A to improve the mortgage process with AI

By Allie Garfinkle
Senior Finance Reporter and author of Term SheetNovember 21, 2025, 6:54 AM ET

Diane Yu remembers getting her first mortgage vividly because it was terrifying.

“I was born in China, English is my second language, and I didn’t even know what questions to ask,” she said. “It was such a big, daunting task and I was very scared. I didn’t even understand credit reports or credit history. It was (and is) actually a frightening experience: You have no idea whether you’re going to get approval until the very last minute.”

Yu—whose last company, FreeWheel, sold to Comcast in 2014—started Tidalwave, which builds agentic AI to simplify the mortgage process. Tidalwave’s tech is directly integrated with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, automates the evaluation of mortgage documents, and provides real-time, multilingual feedback to borrowers. Cofounded by Yu, Jack Deng, and Cheng Li in 2023, the startup has now raised its $22 million Series A, Fortune has exclusively learned. Permanent Capital led the round, with participation from homebuilding giant D.R. Horton and Engineering Capital.

“When people are applying for mortgages, they’re scared—they have no idea what’s on their credit report, and don’t know if they’re qualified,” said Yu. “They wait for 45 days. They’ve submitted their entire life’s worth of a track record. Officers say, ‘I got this information, and I’m going to submit it to my underwriting department.’ Then, you don’t hear from them until they next ask for more information.”

Tidalwave is looking to speed that up, with the goal of processing north of 200,000 loans yearly. (That’s roughly 4% of the estimated $1.46 trillion in 2026 projected U.S. mortgage originations. Tidalwave declined to disclose its current loan volume.)

Yu believes AI can discernibly improve parts of the mortgage process. For example: She believes AI can move the needle on loan officer efficiency and offer better support and transparency to borrowers—more clear, multilingual support can allow prospective homeowners to ask “dumb questions” more readily. But there are complexities of the housing crisis that AI cannot fix, especially around macroeconomic forces like high interest rates and systemic issues around housing affordability.

“I think the industry does realize something has to change,” said Yu. “Especially with the current interest rate environment, the cost of buying a home is just continuously going up. People just can’t afford it, so the industry has to look at creative ways to reduce costs, so they can bring the benefit back to borrowers.”

Home buying will always have high-stakes complexities and require an alarming amount of paperwork. But at least when it comes to the future, Yu does believe that, over time, getting a mortgage will become a more instantaneous process.

“The younger generation, used to interacting 100% digitally, would expect results right away,” said Yu. “In the future, I do think this process is going to shrink dramatically, where very quickly you can just get a house.”

Allie Garfinkle

X:@agarfinks

Email:alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com