Digital closings firm Qualia announced Monday that it has reached unicorn status with a fresh infusion of venture capital. And for good measure, it also announced that it had acquired a rival in the title and escrow software space.
Qualia said on Monday that it is now valued at more than $1 billion following a $65 million Series D funding round, according to reports. The latest round of funding was led by existing investors Tiger Global, 8VC and Menlo Ventures. Qualia has raised $160 million in venture capital since its founding in 2015.
Apart from the fundraise, San Francisco-based Qualia also announced its acquisition of Adeptive Software, the creator of ResWare, production software for title and escrow professionals. The price of the acquisition was not disclosed.
“Modern real estate transactions require new infrastructure,” Nate Baker, chief executive officer and co-founder of Qualia, said in a statement. “The Qualia and Adeptive teams are both working towards bringing that seamless home buying, selling and refinance experience to the real estate ecosystem at large.”
It’s been a busy year for Qualia, which in November launched a “Physical Document Service” that enables mortgage lenders to automate the management of paper trailing documents from title partners through its own platform.
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It also launched “Qualia Post,” a post-closing solution that integrates with a lender’s LOS to automate the retrieval of closing and post-closing documents from title companies.
The acquisition of Adeptive highlights how hot the digital closings space has become over the last year, driven largely by the pandemic and a consumer shift toward automation and digitization.
Qualia’s rival Notarize, which offers a fully digitized title and escrow platform, raised $35 million in a Series C round in July. JetClosing, a cloud-based digital title and escrow startup, raised $9 million in June.
Just a few days ago, Walters Kluwer acquired eOriginal, a cloud-based digital lending software for $280 million. And Stewart Information Services Corp., the parent company of Stewart Title, announced earlier this month that it would broaden its digital offerings with the acquisition of NotaryCam, a prominent player in the notarization and eClosings space.
March also saw a flurry of activity as First American purchased Docutech for $350 million and Black Knight acquired Collateral Analytics for an undisclosed price.
Qualia’s research department reported recently that more than half of homebuyers prefer an entirely digital closing process, yet only 13% of recent home buyers reported having one.