The story
History
Prosper opened to the public on February 5, 2006, and was founded by Chris Larsen (the founder of E-loan) and John Witchel. From 2006 to 2009, Prosper operated a variable rate model. Prosper acted as an eBay-style online auction marketplace, with lenders and borrowers ultimately determining loan rates using a Dutch auction-like system. Effective December 19, 2010, Prosper filed a new prospectus with the SEC, changing its business model to use pre-set rates determined solely by Prosper based on a formula evaluating each prospective borrower's credit risk.
Since its 2009 relaunch, Prosper received a Series D funding round of $14.7M in April 2010 with participation from all previous investors as well as new investors CompuCredit and TomorrowVentures. TomorrowVentures is an investment vehicle funded by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported on November 11, 2010, that Prosper was seeking additional funding and Prosper received an additional funding infusion in a Series E round on June 3, 2011. According to Prosper's SEC filing, the company raised $17.15 million by selling additional shares at an average of approximately $0.738/share. Series E investors included Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Crosslink Capital, Accel Partners, Agilus Ventures and TomorrowVentures.
In January 2013, Prosper received $20 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital, followed by $25 million in September 2013 led by Sequoia Capital and BlackRock. In May 2014, Prosper announced a $70 million funding round led by Francisco Partners. Credit Suisse's NEXT fund led an investment of $165 million in Prosper in April 2015. In 2017, Prosper raised US$50 million in a Series G round, led by FinEX Asia's private equity division.
In April 2025, Prosper entered into a $500 million forward flow agreement with Fortress Investment Group and Edge Focus. This partnership is designed to expand Prosper's personal loan marketplace by providing dedicated capital support loan originations.
2025 Data breach
On 18 September 2025, Prosper announced that it had detected unauthorised access to their systems. According to cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt from Have I Been Pwned?, the breach impacted 17.6 million unique email addresses as well as other customer data including dates of birth, names, credit status information, government issued IDs, IP addresses and physical addresses. Responding to an inquiry by The Register, Prosper stated it was not able to validate the claim made by Hunt, as their own investigation into the breach was still ongoing.
From Wikipedia’s article on Prosper Marketplace, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.6