“Renting! Such a seamless and enjoyable experience,” said no one ever.

If you’ve ever searched for an apartment, you know the drill. You scan listings online for weeks, and finally, when a promising option pops up on a Friday, you request a tour, only to be left hanging until Monday afternoon. By the time the leasing agent responds, schedules have shifted and days have passed without a tour on the books. The current rental experience is anything but streamlined, leaving a massive opportunity for disruption.

Now, imagine a world where you get an immediate response after inquiring about that dream listing. You ask your pressing questions about availability, amenities and policies, and within minutes, you’re scheduling a live tour—accessible 24/7, over voice, text, email or webchat. Post-move-in, the same system handles everything from maintenance requests to rent reminders. EliseAI is making this future a reality, and it’s arriving at a community near you.

EliseAI is redefining the renter experience with a vertically focused, GenAI-native platform that automates 90% of leasing and resident conversations. By offering a superior, unified experience, EliseAI not only enhances resident satisfaction, but also delivers significant ROI for property owners and operators. Following its success in housing, EliseAI has extended its conversational AI solution to the healthcare vertical, starting with appointment scheduling—a use case we believe EliseAI has perfected over the past few years for residential housing. 

At Sapphire Ventures, we are motivated by EliseAI’s mission to build conversational AI solutions that transform industries crucial to sustaining our lives. We are incredibly excited about the potential of GenAI to completely transform many industries that rely heavily on manual workflows and today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re leading EliseAI’s $75 million Series D to fuel its next chapter of growth. 

How GenAI is Closing a Critical Communication Gap in Housing

Nearly 50% of rental inquiries go unanswered, and those that do receive responses typically wait over 24 hours for replies that are often incomplete and inaccurate. This inefficiency results in wasted marketing spend, reduced occupancy, low lease rates and overworked and unsatisfied staff, all amounting to tens of thousands of dollars of waste per property per year. Recognizing the opportunity to improve the resident experience and thereby drive occupancy and renewal rates, multifamily and single-family rental property owners and operators are urgently looking to digitize and automate their resident engagement strategies to stand out from the crowd.

With the rise of generative AI and specifically ChatGPT, broader awareness of AI’s potential impact in property management has exploded. The largest residential property managers in the world are leading the charge for AI adoption, prioritizing it as a core piece of their roadmap as they strive to offer a superior prospect and resident experience and win in an increasingly competitive rental housing market.

EliseAI Takes Conversational AI to the Next Level

Some of the largest multifamily owners and property management companies in the world, like AvalonBay, Asset Living, Bozzuto, Equity Residential and Invitation Homes are using EliseAI to save thousands of labor hours per year, increase lead conversion rates, reduce delinquency rates and accelerate cash flows. Here’s how: From the moment a lead interacts with an internet listing service or website, EliseAI takes over—answering questions about available units and community amenities, scheduling tours, sending reminders, following up post tours, and guiding prospects through the rental application process. Post-move-in, EliseAI remains the go-to communication channel for maintenance requests, rent payments and resident services, providing a consistent, high-quality experience throughout the resident lifecycle.

EliseAI comes equipped with industry-specific technology integrations (e.g., property management systems), regulatory compliance and a deep understanding of leasing and resident workflows. This purpose-built approach enables EliseAI to accelerate time-to-value for customers—typically getting them up and running within just one month—and driving significant total ROI over time. 

By managing all communications across the renter lifecycle, we believe EliseAI is setting the new standard for conversational AI. Unlike traditional, decision-tree-based chatbots or conversational agents that simply process a string of words in a question and rely on an explicit Q&A bank to respond, EliseAI applies AI to deeply understand relevant information like building policies, amenities and unit availability, and intelligently generates natural language responses to prospect and resident inquiries. To do so, EliseCRM, the industry’s only AI-powered CRM which comes at no additional charge, pulls data from property management systems, documents the tribal knowledge that employees have on the building as well as other information that lives in binders, sticky notes, file cabinets etc. EliseAI uses AI-driven tools to collect this information, which includes Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), employee responsibilities and skills, and other unstructured data about the building (e.g. amenity hours, accepted rent payment methods). As a result, EliseAI can generate natural language responses with incredible accuracy, as well as execute multi-step, conditional workflows such as determining when a maintenance request qualifies as an emergency or not and taking the appropriate next steps. 

A Visionary Team, Quietly Building a Company of Consequence

At Sapphire Ventures, we invest in companies poised to define their industries, and EliseAI is no exception. With a history of successful partnerships in conversational AI, including Moveworks, Paradox.ai, Qualified, Simpplr, Ujet and Yellow.ai, we believe EliseAI will set a new standard for consumer engagement, starting with property management and expanding into other critical sectors like healthcare. 

If you’re interested in learning more about EliseAI or exploring opportunities to join their growing team, you can find more information here.