Financial technology start-up Social Finance, or SoFi, received $1 billion in funding led by SoftBank on Wednesday. This marks the largest single financing round in fintech to date, according to the release announcing the funding. However, SoFi co-founder and CEO Mike Cagney told CNBC's "Squawk Alley" he's not necessarily ready for an initial public offering.
"I think that it gives us some time, and some option in terms of when we want to go public," he said. "I think it's a phenomenal endorsement of SoftBank on SoFi's business model and how we're executing, but more importantly, on the vision of SoFi."
Cagney said that vision does not include being "the origination arm of a bank."
"We actually are trying to change banking entirely. We're trying to displace what we think is a fundamentally broken system," Cagney said. "And to do that it's going to require us taking some risks, it's going to require us taking some chances. And those are things that are difficult to do as a public company, when you're on a quarterly reporting calendar."
He added that SoFi's latest influx of capital gives it the ability to be "aggressive" in its ambition and to take risks and chances in the credit sector, like introducing new innovative mortgage and personal finance products.
However, the extra money will also allow SoFi to launch initiatives in other sectors too, Cagney said.
"So, initiatives in wealth management, initiatives in banking account alternatives — things that allow us to give a holistic solution where we can actually allow people to leave their existing banking relationship and just work with SoFi."
Cagney said the lending company hopes to use the funding to hire more people and accelerate growth with significantly faster product development and innovation.
"We felt that what that capital was going to allow us to do is take initiatives that might have been 2017 or [2018] initiatives and bring them into [2015] and [2016]," Cagney said.
