SoftBank Vision Fund makes $450 million investment in Compass

When we hadn’t heard a peep from Masayoshi Son for over two weeks, we knew something had to be up…

…and that appears to be the case, as SoftBank’s Vision Fund invested $450 million in real estate tech company Compass. The last 30 days have been very kind to Compass, which also raised $100 million from Fidelity four weeks ago. It’s now valued at $2.2 billion.

When we hadn’t heard a peep from Masayoshi Son for over two weeks, we knew something had to be up…

…and that appears to be the case, as SoftBank’s Vision Fund invested $450 million in real estate tech company Compass. The last 30 days have been very kind to Compass, which also raised $100 million from Fidelity four weeks ago. It’s now valued at $2.2 billion.

$2.2 billion for what?

Even in 2012, Compass (or as it was called then, Urban Compass) had stars in its eyes. Early backers like Goldman Sachs and AmEx CEO Kenneth Chenault invested $8 million…one of the largest seed rounds ever at the time.

Maybe that’s because the founders themselves are a dynamic duo: Robert Reffkin, who was chief of staff (now top economic advisor to the president) to Gary Cohn at Goldman Sachs, and Ori Allon, a serial entrepreneur who sold startups to Google and Twitter.

And this time, they came up with…

Compass, a platform helping connect buyers and sellers of real estate. If that sounds familiar, it is. With Zillow, Homes.com, Trulia, Redfin, and others helping you find that exposed brick walk-up of your dreams, it’s a crowded space. And with transaction volume in the U.S. real estate market reaching trillions of dollars, we’re not surprised to see startups rubbing shoulders.

So what does Masa see in Compass?

A gorgeous platform practically overflowing with data. Literally, data might ooze from your phone onto your hand. With Compass, you’ll find an innovative interactive search tool, Collections (the “Pinterest of real estate”), which attempts to help you and your broker communicate more efficiently.

Compass is the real estate equivalent of the iPhone, which carefully curates your experience from opening the package through sending your first “A[?] love you” text.

So what to do with $450 million?

Three words: expansion, expansion, expansion. While Compass has staked a claim in 11 U.S. cities, it’s got global ambitions. And given its set to do $350 million in annual revenue (from 16,000 transactions), Compass has a war chest to take on the road.

For Allon, one thing matters: “Really aggressive growth.”