Scottsdale-based HomeLight has raised another $20 million in equity to continue expansion of the real estate tech firm's AI-powered product aimed at industry lenders and agents.
Palo Alto, California-based Zeev Ventures led the Series D round extension, with participation from Stereo Capital and Menlo Ventures, among others.
Those same investors raised $100 million in a Series D round for HomeLight in September 2021, then added a $60 million extension in May 2022, said Drew Uher, founder and CEO of HomeLight.
"This is an additional extension," he said, bringing the total amount of capital raised to $300 million since he founded the company in 2012.
This latest round wasn't even his idea.
"Given the challenging market," Uher said. "It's a very challenging fundraising environment out there as well. But our existing investors came to us, seeing the momentum in the business. They offered to put in additional equity capital. We took them up on their offer."
This new funding will be used to support the expansion of HomeLight's flagship financial product, Buy Before You Sell, to lenders across 47 states.
Uher said the company's product helps homebuyers get past a huge hurdle: selling their existing home in order to buy a new residence. The program uses AI technology to allow buyers to unlock up to 70% of the equity from their existing home and begin making offers the same day, he said.
HomeLight said it has already unlocked more than $655 million in equity from clients' existing homes across the country with the Buy Before You Sell product. So far, 40 lenders are currently using the product, including The Loan Store and Luminate Home Loans.
HomeLight moved HQ from San Francisco to Arizona
HomeLight has 300 employees, with the majority at its Scottsdale headquarters, and the remainder across the U.S. and around the globe, Uher said.
The company moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Scottsdale in August 2021.
"Arizona continues to be a really important market for us, both as a place to grow our business from a talent perspective but also to do business," Uher said. "The Phoenix area is one of the fastest-growing metros in the country. It remains a vibrant place for us to do business. We're glad we ended up expanding into Arizona."
In March, HomeLight made Inc. magazine's 2024 Southwest Regional list of fast-growing companies, landing 25th on the list with 449% revenue growth from 2020 to 2022.
Before founding the company in 2012, Uher was working on his MBA at Stanford University and buying his first home.
"I realized there were so many things wrong with the homebuying process," he said. "I got to do something about this. That was the 'aha' moment."
Originally, he helped connect residential real estate agents with homebuyers, using an AI tool that showed which agents were likely to sell homes faster and garner more money for sellers.
As he grew his business, he realized that agents end up helping their clients find mortgage lenders, title companies, inspectors, stagers and renovation firms.
"Over time, we continued to identify how we can help our agent partners and lender partners help their clients get a better outcome in the transaction through software AI and financial innovation," Uher said.
