EliseAI, an organization developing a collection of AI-powered property management tools for landlords, has raised $75 million in a Series D funding round, valuing the startup at $1 billion.
EliseAI is the brainchild of co-founder and CEO Minna Song, who met the corporate's other co-founder, Tony Stoyanov, while they were each studying at Cambridge. After graduating, Song moved to New York City, where she took a job as an administrative assistant at a residential real estate firm.
At the corporate, Song saw how inefficiencies within the rental and leasing industry – particularly inefficiencies in communicating with current and prospective tenants – contributed to exhaustion and burnout amongst management teams, she says.
“Stoyanov and I recognized this challenge and began developing AI software to automate communications,” Song told TechCrunch, “and in 2017 we founded EliseAI.”
Today, EliseAI employs a military of chatbots that text and email with tenants and reply to calls about topics like apartment tours, maintenance requests, lease renewals and late payments. Song says the chatbots are trained on the questions and conversations of tenants – each those trying to rent an apartment and current residents – and are designed to routinely route inquiries to humans when obligatory.
“We only use data that now we have generated internally,” Song said. “We don’t purchase or use external data. This gives us control over the info we use.”
As a privacy-conscious person, I could be wary of sending chatbots like EliseAI personal information—and volunteering for the corporate's AI training. So I asked Song about EliseAI's data retention policy. She said the corporate gives its users the power to request deletion of their data, opt out of providing their information for training, and, in compliance with laws just like the California Consumer Privacy Act, to receive a replica of any data EliseAI has stored about them.
“We don’t sell, license or share consumer data for any purpose,” Song added. “Consumer data is the exclusive property of our respective client – a property manager or owner – and we use that data just for limited purposes as expressly permitted by our client agreements, our privacy policy and applicable law.”
Some Reviews of EliseAI's chatbots are critical, suggesting that nuance will not be AI's strong suit. According to 1 reviewer, the chatbots – which don't clearly discover themselves as AI – sometimes fail to have interaction managers and agents after they should, and book property viewings without key information like move-in dates or phone numbers.
However, Song claims that EliseAI's chatbots are “repeatedly improving their ability to anticipate tenants' needs” and, in keeping with the corporate's internal data, are increasing rental viewing bookings by a median of 125% while reducing overdue payments by 50%.
“Our technology is designed for owners, operators and third-party property management firms of multifamily and single-family properties to extend operational efficiency, reduce the technical burden and value of point solutions, increase occupancy, reduce delinquencies and improve the tenant experience,” Song said.
In addition to chatbots, EliseAI offers a dashboard that helps property managers keep track of prospect and resident requests (e.g. work orders), generate operational reports, and track the progress of renewals. The dashboard is included free with all of EliseAI's AI products, which the corporate offers as modules priced under a software-as-a-service model.
EliseAI competes with providers reminiscent of Colleen AI, Funnel, Knock and LeaseHawk. Song says the corporate has greater than 350 customers, including 70% of the highest 50 rental apartment operators within the U.S.
“We haven’t pursued hypergrowth in headcount, but have as an alternative focused on controlled hiring and sustainable burn management while continuing to take a position strategically in revenue growth,” Song said. “We have observed that funding stays strong for firms like EliseAI that effectively address enduring business challenges like operational efficiency, particularly in fundamental markets like housing, that are at all times in demand.”
After one other successful round of financing, EliseAI, which employs around 150 full-time employees in its New York City offices, is planning further expansion right into a relatively unexpected market: HealthcareSong believes much of the corporate's technology stack might be customized to satisfy the executive needs of healthcare clinics, reminiscent of appointment scheduling and billing and payment.
In fact, EliseAI has launched a healthcare solution called HealthAI in 2023, and Song says several vendors are already using it.
However, the market is crowded; EliseAI has to compete against startups like Hyro, which also use AI to handle text and voice conversations between healthcare organizations and their patients.
Sapphire Ventures led the round with participation from Point72 Private Investments, Divco West, Navitas Capital and Koch Real Estate Investments, bringing EliseAI's total raised to $140 million. The recent capital shall be used for recruiting, AI R&D, product development and supporting EliseAI's go-to-market efforts, Song said.
“Our predominant focus was to draw a wonderful partner to the corporate, which is why we selected Sapphire,” Song added. Sapphire partner Cathy Gao will join EliseAI's board of directors.
“While EliseAI is currently essentially the most widely used AI platform within the space, the residential real estate market remains to be within the early stages of leveraging AI potential,” Gao said in an announcement. “I consider the corporate is well positioned to take the lead in residential construction and achieve similar leads to recent industries reminiscent of healthcare.”
