Firm Secures $6.5M for AI-Powered Leasing Software

Navitas Captial, a venture capital firm focused on real estate technology and innovation has invested $6.5 million in Series A financing in an artificial intelligence-powered leasing agent software that currently streamlines leasing processes for over 250,000 multifamily communities.  The company, MeetElise, was founded in 2017 by Minna Song of MIT and Tony Stoyanov of the University of Cambridge and has raised a total of $8.5 million in funding which includes the recent funding by Navitas Capital.

MeetElise was launched with the desire to make housing more accessible. “But instead of building houses, we decided to take the approach of building scalable software to help existing residential property managers run more efficiently and profitably,” said Minna Song, co-founder and CEO of MeetElise. Their technology uses machine learning to fill the communication gaps between prospective renters and apartment operators, thereby increasing the conversion rates of traditional leasing agents using conventional methods and tools by more than 65%, according to the company.

“The enormous potential of the technology was not the only reason for the investment,” said Louis Schotsky, Managing Partner at Navitas who led the deal. “We wouldn’t have invested in MeetElise without the rare technical talent in natural language processing that Minna and Tony bring to the platform.”

Some of the largest multifamily property management companies such as Equity Residential and AvalonBay participated directly in the Series A round as investors, after using MeetElise in pilot projects.

Other investors include Jones Lang LaSalle, Equity Residential, Avalon Bay, First American Financial, Saint-Gobain and DivCo West.

The Series A investment will also be used to expand the offering to small and midsize property management companies and recruiting efforts.