NYC's Newest Unicorn - $75M Raise For AI-Driven Real Estate Comms Platform

EliseAI, a conversational artificial intelligence communications platform for the housing industry, announced Wednesday that it raised $75 million in a Series D round, bringing its valuation to more than $1 billion. The proptech startup is the latest New York City unicorn, according to the company’s announcement.

Sapphire Ventures led the round with participation from existing investors Navitas Capital, Point72 Private Investments, Divco West and Koch Real Estate Investments.

Minna Song, co-founder and CEO of EliseAI, said the company will use the latest funding to hire engineering talent and continue to build new products.

“Our AI automates more than 90 percent of communication with renters across all communication channels, including email, text message, voice and web chat,” Song said. “It handles everything from apartment searches and tours, to maintenance requests and lease renewals. This allows renters to receive immediate assistance and helps properties increase capacity.”

Founded in 2017, the Manhattan-based company’s generative AI is supported by a team of 50 and serves more than two million apartments across the country, Song said. It has 70 percent of the top 50 rental housing owners and operators as its clients, including Asset Living, Avalon Bay, Bozzuto and Greystar.

EliseAI claims that it is the only AI product in the space to work with all property types, from conventional multifamily to scattered-site and single-family properties to student and affordable properties, as well as properties managed locally and through centralization.

The Series D comes as EliseAI has seen accelerating demand, with growth in annual recurring revenue of more than 2.5 times since its $35 million Series C round in 2023, according to the company.

“Housing is a basic need for all humans, and that’s why we all work in this industry, and why we’re focused on the residential sector,” said Song. “I think that it’s a really underserved market by technology and the importance of housing is why we need to focus on making it efficient. [Landlords] have major problems, so you need to provide something that is really solving the biggest operational challenges, the core day-to-day things that they need to get done, like keeping the lights on versus a lot of nice-to-have features. I think that’s been a big factor in why people have adopted us, especially in industries that don’t spend a lot on technology in general.”

Looking to build on its success in residential real estate, EliseAI is planning to enter the healthcare market with its technology, said Song.

“EliseAI’s multimodal AI platform has revolutionized customer interactions in the housing industry and we believe that it is setting the standard for how purpose-built AI can deliver clear, measurable results with high accuracy and compliance to industry regulations,” said Cathy Gao, a partner at Sapphire Ventures and a new EliseAI board member. “I am thrilled to partner with Minna, Tony Stoyanov [co-founder and CTO] and their team as they continue to transform the housing industry and tackle other core industries like healthcare.”

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