Dark Matter’s Vikas Rao on the nature of shifting mortgage work in the era of AI

On Thursday, Dark Matter Technologies announced the promotion of Vikas Rao from chief technology officer to CEO, with Rao replacing Sean Dugan.

At the same time, the Florida-headquartered company announced layoffs impacting 5% of its workforce. The roles affected were not immediately announced.

Rao, just one day into his new role heading the technology company, sat down with HousingWire and discussed his transition from CTO to CEO. He also clarified the strategy behind the layoffs and shared his focus on market implementation and lowering barriers for new customers. 

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Sarah Wolak: Vikas, you’re officially one day into being the CEO of Dark Matter. What is changing the most for you beyond the title and the scope of the position?

Vikas Rao: As the CTO of Dark Matter. I was very much driving our AI and technology strategy. I’ve also worked in product roles in the past, so I was also deeply involved in our product direction. What changes as I take over as CEO now is also how we take what we’re doing from a product and technology perspective into the market.

One of my core intentions is to lower the barrier to entry for new customers who want to adopt our platform, and really bring a technology and an automation lens to all aspects of the organization. We have 94% adoption of AI within Dark Matter; we’re not just deploying AI for our customers, but within our own organization, we’re using it to write code, to test software … so it’s pervasive.

It’s just how we operate, how we deliver our product innovations to our customers, as well as lowering the barrier of entry for new customers who want to join our customer base. So that’s kind of the shift in how we operate that will be changing as I take over the CEO role.

Wolak: The company previously mentioned that it plans to turn tech investments into stronger commercial performance. Can you talk more about what you mean by that, and what success looks like over the next year or two?

Rao: As I mentioned, we have incredible products, and we’re doubling down on our strategy. We recently unveiled our direction at our Horizon conference to our customer base, and the reception could not have been more positive.

What we’re really doing is kind of shaping where lending is going, and we’re doing that before sometimes our customers are ready for it. We want to lead our customers and the industry where technology’s going, where lending and its paradigm are going to be. By doing so, that naturally translates into growth and expansion.

Our Aiva platform — which is our AI-based document recognition, data extraction, and all of the income asset analysis that happens — is now being embraced by some of the largest lenders on our platform. We think every single lender out there should have it because the ROI on it is undeniable.

We believe in making sure our customers have the best ROI from our product, and the commercial performance and the growth of our company are going to be byproducts of that. So the focus for us is to innovate and help our customers adopt it. It’s very much customer first in everything we do, and everything else is a byproduct of that.

Wolak: I would be remiss if I didn’t ask about the 5% reduction in force or about Sean Dugan. Is he still with Dark Matter or has he transitioned to a different role?

Rao: He has transitioned out of Dark Matter.

Wolak: Can you share which roles specifically were impacted by the reduction in force and why the decision was made? How many people did this impact?

Rao: The reduction in force, fundamentally, is a reflection of how we see the nature of work shifting. I mentioned we are using AI extensively within our own organization, and so for a lot of our people, the nature of work has shifted from doing to reviewing.

Right now, AI is doing the work. Then our developers, etc, come in and see what AI did, and then review and accept it. The reductions were more from a perspective of now, we can do a lot more through automation and AI to develop, test and deliver our products. So the reductions were to kind of mirror the efficiencies we have gained just from an operational perspective as an organization. We’re a little over 1,000 people, so it affected 5% of that.

Wolak: Can you go deeper into how this organizational shift aligns with the priorities of Dark Matter going forward?

Rao: I think the direction of the company, which we unveiled to our customer base at our Horizon conference, remains unchanged. Fundamentally, Empower and Aiva are market-leading solutions that are being used by some of the largest lenders in the country.

Now what we’re doing is embedding agentic experiences into all of these products. So that is a critical priority for Dark Matter; we will be unveiling a lot more of that throughout this year and next year. So that direction remains unchanged, and again, we strongly feel like we have the right team in place to drive that transformation.

The nature of work for us is shifting. Mortgage lending needs to make that same transition.

Wolak: Which products do you feel that Dark Matter customers are getting the strongest ROI from right now?

Rao: Empower is the foundation; automation has been part of it for a long time. I think where our customers are now seeing the most ROI is as they also use our point-of-sale platform and Aiva in conjunction as just one suite. It’s not three different products, and this is what happens when you bolt on products from different companies versus an integrated suite that drives our ROI.

The point of sale is all about customer experience, the borrower who is working with the lender. But the lenders also need to see that ROI from the loan origination with the loan fulfillment perspective, because the cost of origination remains extremely high.

This is where Aiva comes in by automating a lot of what an underwriter would do, dramatically lowering errors and time to underwrite, etc., so that the customer is getting a much better experience, a faster closing experience. And the lender, with the power of Aiva embedded into Empower, is having faster, cheaper loan originations. It’s a winning formula, and that’s kind of where we’re seeing the most ROI for our customers when they deploy this as a holistic suite.

I’m incredibly energized by the mission that we’re on, the team that we have at Dark Matter, and the sense of urgency we feel at bringing to life all of these great innovations that are in the hopper right now.