Austin—Ojo Labs, which is developing artificial intelligence-enabled chatbots designed for the real estate industry, has raised $20.5 million.
The new Series B funding round comes from investors such as Realogy Holdings, Royal Bank of Canada, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and ServiceMaster, along with Texas venture capital firms LiveOak Venture Partners and Silverton Partners. Ojo Labs has now raised a total of $29.5 million.
“Ojo is a single-source, 24-7, of all the information and resources needed in the home journey,” says John Berkowitz, Ojo’s co-founder and CEO. “From you bought your home yesterday and need to service it to all the way to five years from today when you are selling your home and then need to buy a new one.”
Right now, Ojo (pronounced: O-Joe) has partnered with companies that focus on that initial step: researching and buying a home. “We decided to bring [our technology] to real estate because there are 100 million-plus people talking about homes in some way, whether that’s watching HGTV and dreaming about homes or wondering what my house is worth to thinking about moving in the next few months,” he says.
Essentially, Ojo is an AI-enabled chatbot that consumers can be connected with through a real estate broker from Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Corcoran, and Sotheby’s International Realty.
The idea is to enable prospective homeowners looking for information that could help their search but before the point when they need to speak to a human agent. “People want more personalized search and answers than they can get from websites but less than what they would get from engaging with a human being because they are not ready for those conversations,” Berkowitz says.
Chatbots are
