citybiz+ EliseAI Raises $35 Million Series C Led by Steve Cohen’s Point72

EliseAI, which has built a conversational artificial intelligence platform for real estate, has closed on $35 million in a Series C funding round led by Point72 Private Investments, an affiliate of Steve Cohen’s New York-based Point72 Asset Management.

Other participating investors include Koch Real Estate Investments and existing investors Golden Seeds (New York) and Navitas Capital (Culver City, Calif.), and San Francisco-based real estate firms JLL Spark, the venture arm of the real estate firm, and DivcoWest.

The New York startup has so far raised $66.9 million from venture firms. Subsequent to the investment, Point72’s Eddie Kang will join EliseAI’s board of directors, the New York startup said.

“We started this company with the vision of using the most advanced technology to transform the industries fundamental to our lives,” said EliseAI co-founder and CEO Minna Song, who has a computer science degree from MIT. “We are incredibly proud of the change we have driven in the real estate industry over the last 6 years. We are thrilled to bring on new partners to enable us to continue to innovate and push into new markets.”

Song and Tony Stoyanov, who earned a computer science degree from the University of Cambridge, co-founded EliseAI — previously known as MeetElise — in 2017 to help real estate firms automate engagements with customers and other stakeholders, and bring new efficiencies to what is typically a laborious process. It does this via a clutch of technologies, primarily driven by AI.

“We believe they have the right team, experience, and technology to bring cutting-edge conversational AI to the real estate industry and unlock a new era of business efficiency,” said Eddie Kang, partner at Point72 Private Investments.

citybiz+ Sponsors

Last year, EliseAI reached a user landmark of one million units, via customers such as Asset Living, Bozzuto and Venterra. It has since grown to 1.5 million.

citybiz+ Cohorts

“A lot of the ongoing value of artificial intelligence and machine learning lies in continuous improvement,” Stoyanov, who serves as the company’s chief technology officer, said last year.  “With true machine learning, each conversation helps the AI to learn and improve, so the more conversations you have, the better your AI will be. Our long history and high conversation volume enable us to improve our conversation quality at an ever-increasing rate,” he added.

EliseAI plans to use the new funding to drive adoption of its technology across the real estate industry, and later explore using its platform in other verticals, such as healthcare.