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EliseAI valued at over $2.2 billion after funding round

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Funding to fuel product innovation and team expansion

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Focus on healthcare and housing industry automation

By Krystal Hu

Aug 20 (Reuters) - Enterprise software maker EliseAI has

raised $250 million in a Series E funding round to expand its

automation tools for the healthcare and housing industries, the

company told Reuters.

The latest funding values the company at over $2.2 billion,

doubling its valuation from about a year ago. Venture capital

firm Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with participation from

Bessemer Venture Partners and existing investors such as

Sapphire Ventures.

The New York-based company, which builds AI to automate

customer service and operations, said it surpassed $100 million

in annual recurring revenue (ARR) earlier this year. The fresh

capital will be used to fuel product innovation and double its

roughly 300-person team over the next year, its CEO Minna Song

told Reuters in an interview, with hiring plans across offices

in New York, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago.

The funding highlights investor appetite for so-called

vertical AI companies that build deeply integrated,

industry-specific solutions rather than general-purpose models.

For EliseAI, the capital provides the firepower to deepen its

hold on the real estate market and scale its newer healthcare

division, tackling costly administrative tasks in two of the

economy's largest and most complex sectors.

"We've seen a fundamental shift in the market, from talking

about AI to using it to solve really costly problems," Song said

in an interview. "The demand from our customers was really

strong, and so we decided that now is the time to invest in

scaling."

EliseAI's platform is able to automate the entire resolution

process by focusing on specific industries, said Alex Immerman,

partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

"A vertical AI like ours will go really, really deep and

will take that customer request and then handle every step

that's required to resolve it," he said, including coordinating

with vendors, scheduling, and ensuring compliance.

The company started by targeting the housing industry in

2017, and expanded its applications to healthcare since 2022, an

industry it said is burdened by similar communication friction

and manual processes.

With generative AI technology bursting onto the scene, its

software can handle more complicated customer inquiries and

workflows by integrating with models like the ones from OpenAI.

It serves Zillow Group ( ZG ) and other rental managers, and touts

its technology is currently used in one in eight apartments in

the U.S. In healthcare, the company has been focusing

on outpatient specialties, including dermatology and women's

health, integrating with electronic health record systems to

automate administrative work.