Better gets $750 million cash infusion

Better.com, “one of the fastest-growing digital homeownership platforms in the world,” and Aurora Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, who on May 11, 2021 announced a definitive merger agreement that would transform Better into a publicly-listed company, are announcing an amended agreement that provides Better with immediate capital to fortify its balance sheet and accelerate the growth of its business. As part of the new agreement, Aurora and SoftBank will provide Better with half of the $1.5 billion they committed immediately instead of waiting until the deal closes.

With the $750 million bridge financing, Better will have over $1 billion of cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet.

“At Better, we put the customer at the absolute center of everything we do. And that focus has enabled us to double our market share over the past 12 months while many in the industry have stayed in place, or, more recently, retrenched. The next two years are going to be a time of massive change in the US real estate market. The COVID bump that helped sustain legacy players in the industry over the past 18 months is fading and we expect a large number of our competitors to scale back their automation and vertical integration efforts. This is exactly the time for us to lean in and accelerate our customer-focused product innovation, and grow our B2B business, which we believe provides us with greater defensibility in a tougher mortgage market. The incremental $750 million of capital in the form of a commitment to fund a convertible note, on top of the $750 million of cash coming immediately to the balance sheet, will help us to do exactly that.” – Better CEO, Vishal Garg.