In late December 2017, Anthony Noto slipped into a San Francisco law firm’s office for a confidential meeting. At the time, he was Twitter’s chief operating officer and looking to level-up to become CEO of San Francisco’s SoFi, a fast-growing student loan startup. Noto was there to pitch the company’s board of directors in the wake of its founder, Mike Cagney, resigning in disgrace after having a relationship with an employee.

The West Point graduate and former Goldman Sachs banker launched into a PowerPoint laying out his plan for SoFi, including what he would do in his first 45, 60, 90 and 180 days. The tech startup, he argued, should act like a bank, offer a supermarket of financial services and help customers “from high school graduation to [the] grave.” Success, he said, meant growing SoFi’s market value to more than $20 billion.

Noto also came with baggage: Earlier that year, shareholders had accused him and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo of concealing a decline in the company’s daily active users, one of management’s primary engagement metrics. The lawsuit was later settled for $810 million, with Twitter, Noto and Costolo denying wrongdoing.

Yet that day in December, Noto’s pitch wowed the room. “It was the most thorough thing I had ever seen,” says Pete Hartigan, a former venture capitalist and SoFi board member. Noto was named SoFi’s CEO in February 2018, and over the past eight years, the 58-year-old has followed a classic banking playbook: sell more financial services to more customers and become central to their financial lives. He has expanded SoFi from three product categories to twelve, pushing beyond student and personal loans into budgeting tips, bank accounts, credit cards, crypto investing, home equity lines of credit, small business loans and technology services.

His results have been impressive. When he took over in 2018, the startup had $240 million in revenues, 650,000 customers and a valuation of $4 billion. By the end of 2025, the stock market was valuing SoFi at nearly $40 billion, it had 13.7 million customers and reached revenues of $3.6 billion. Among the nation’s banks, SoFi now ranks as the 50th-largest, with about $50 billion in assets, according to the Federal Reserve. Noto has been richly rewarded: He earned $30 million in 2025 and $103 million in 2021, the year SoFi went public. Forbes estimates his net worth at about $400 million.

But in recent months, investors have begun to question SoFi’s success story. Since November 2025, its stock has fallen by nearly 50%, reflecting concerns about AI-driven job displacement, turmoil in private credit markets and the company’s growth prospects. SoFi had been priced as though it were a high-growth tech company with a forward price-earnings ratio of nearly 70 times, while major banks like JPMorgan Chase tended to trade at 15 times’ earnings or less. Wall Street was suddenly re-evaluating the fintech darling.

Then, just as SoFi’s stock was reeling from its Wall Street drubbing, short seller Muddy Waters came out with a scathing, 28-page report in March, essentially accusing the company of cooking its books in order to inflate its earnings, calling it a “financial engineering treadmill.” Mainstream stock analysts had already turned against the company, with some accusing SoFi of “aggressive” accounting practices, a claim the company denies.

Today, Wall Street analysts rate the one-time fintech darling as a “hold” on average, according to FactSet, putting it in the doghouse among brand-name financial technology peers like Affirm and Robinhood.

“Investors are starting to realize SoFi is really just a lending business,” says KBW analyst Tim Switzer.

Formerly known as Social Finance, SoFi began life at Stanford Business School in 2011, in a famed class known as “Startup Garage” where Mike Cagney and his cofounders dreamed up a peer-to-peer student loan specialist organized around top 50 elite colleges. Federal loans had always carried the same interest rate regardless of a borrower’s credit profile. Cagney realized he could offer lower refinancing rates to alumni of top schools. He also figured that prosperous alumni from places like Harvard, MIT and Stanford would happily lend to borrowers from their alma maters, earning good returns at lower risk of default.

One of Cagney’s standout skills as a founder is that he’s a “gifted communicator and synthesizer,” Pete Hartigan says. “Back then, doing fintech was not normal, and doing student loans was definitely not normal.” According to PitchBook,........

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