- Dwelly, a company that buys UK letting agencies and runs them using AI, has raised $170 million in a Series B round led by EQT Growth and General Catalyst. This comes only five months after its last funding round.
- The CEOs of ElevenLabs, Legora, and Synthesia, as well as KKR’s Philipp Freise, personally invested in this round. These AI leaders are backing a property services company rather than another AI lab.
- Dwelly now manages 15,000 properties with a total rent roll of £350 million. The company says its AI allows one property manager to handle 300 units, up from 100 before.
Dwelly, a London startup that buys UK letting agencies and uses AI to run them, has raised $170 million in a Series B round led by EQT Growth and General Catalyst. The funding includes $95 million in equity and a $75 million debt facility from Trinity Capital.
Investors in the equity round included s16vc, Begin Capital, DVC, KKR’s Philipp Freise, and the CEOs of ElevenLabs, Legora, and Synthesia.
“Dwelly is AI-first by default: we assume AI should be able to do every operational task. That changes what a lettings agent can be. AI takes over the transactional layer, while our people become world-class advisors to landlords and tenants,” says Ilya Drozdov, co-founder and CEO of Dwelly.
A £100 billion market still run on paperwork
Dwelly estimates the UK lettings market at roughly 20,000 firms and more than £100 billion in annual rent, with the top 100 firms controlling under 30% of it. Independent data from Savills puts the private rented sector at around 5.5 million homes, broadly matching Dwelly’s own figure.
The sector, regulated in part by Propertymark, the industry’s professional body, has resisted digitisation for decades, still leaning on manual paperwork and phone calls, the gap Dwelly’s founders are targeting.
Drozdov started Dwelly in 2023 with Dan Lifshits and Dmitry Khanukov, who both worked at Uber and Gett. They had already built and sold a 10,000-property rental business in Eastern Europe. This experience helped them enter the UK market by buying Hull-based Lime Property, skipping the usual early proof-of-concept stage and going straight to acquisitions.
Buying agencies instead of selling them software
The startup buys independent letting agencies instead of just selling them software. After the purchase, agency operations move to Dwelly’s AI platform, which handles tenant inquiries, onboarding, rent collection, maintenance, and compliance. Staff step in only when human judgment is needed.
Dwelly says this model lets each property manager handle over 300 units, up from about 100 before automation.
This ownership model sets Dwelly apart from its competitors. Proptech companies like Arthur Online offer automation tools that agencies can choose to use. Traditional roll-ups like Lomond Group, which raised $47.5 million and grew to over 190 employees through more than 100 acquisitions, bring agencies together but usually keep daily operations the same.
Dwelly combines buying agencies with required automation from the beginning.
AI money backing a non-AI business
This deal comes as AI-focused roll-ups are getting more attention in Europe’s services sector. General Catalyst’s portfolio includes Anthropic, Ramp, and Mistral, and the firm has used a similar investment strategy in other fragmented, people-heavy industries.
“Dwelly has reimagined the tenant experience: a question answered in seconds, a viewing booked in minutes, a contract signed without ever walking into an agency office,” notes Zeynep Yavuz-Willson, partner at General Catalyst and new board member at Dwelly.
Nils Petter Nygaard, managing director at EQT Growth, adds, “We believe the era of simply aggregating agencies for financial returns is over. Dwelly is reinventing service delivery by applying AI to every part of the operating model.”
Dwelly plans to use the new funding to keep buying UK agencies, improve AI automation for compliance and maintenance, create financial products for landlords and tenants, and expand into some European markets. The company expects to grow its team from about 300 to 1,500 employees by the end of the year.
This round comes after the $93 million raise reported by TFN in February, bringing Dwelly’s total funding to over $260 million in less than a year.
