The multifamily housing sector loses $500 billion each year due to vacancies from ineffective leasing and poor lead conversion. Grotto AI helps agents by analysing calls and tours in real time, coaching them on building rapport, handling objections, and closing deals.
It’s already delivering results for operators like Weidner Apartment Homes, which manages over 70,000 units.
Today, the New York startup announced a $10 million seed round led by ICONIQ, which recently co-led Anthropic’s $30 billion funding. Angel investors include David Dear (BILT), Caren Maio (Get100), Avi Dorfman (Compass), and Asymmetric Capital Partners.
Creating real-time AI guidance and coaching for leasing
Nick Deveau, trained in AI at Stanford, and Ben Epstein founded Grotto AI after leading EvolutionIQ’s core technology to a $730 million acquisition in 2024, one of AI’s first major exits. Together, they bring 20 years of AI experience across hiring, healthcare, and insurance, having built machine learning platforms for Fortune 500 companies.
Nick Deveau, Co-Founder & CEO at Grotto AI, tells TFN, “So, we started Grotto AI because we saw a gap: the moments that matter most in leasing—the human-to-human interactions—were getting no support at all. There was plenty of automation-focused technology being built “to give teams time back for what matters most,” but there was no tech being built for exactly those moments that matter most.”
“Our thesis is simple: the biggest impact for our customers’ bottom line isn’t opex savings through automation – it’s filling units faster at the right price. And doing that requires supporting agents to build rapport and build relationships with prospects in order to close more leases,” adds Deveau.
Grotto’s platform processes thousands of leasing interactions using CMU- and Stanford-built models, identifying interpersonal signals, such as laughter and curiosity, as stronger predictors than scripts or speed. Its unique features include real-time call and tour coaching, property-specific revenue drivers, and post-call analysis, delivering measurable lease increases without automation.
Deveau explains, “Grotto AI is a real-time AI guidance & coaching for leasing teams. Our process is two-fold. First, when we engage with a customer, we analyse historical prospect interactions to understand what top-performing agents are doing to close more leads. We do this on a per-customer and even per-property basis so that our guidance and coaching are completely bespoke to what the data show works for each customer.”
“Second, after figuring out what sells, we ensure that what sells reaches every prospect at every touchpoint in the prospect journey. By doubling down on human-to-human interactions, we can bring a level of consistency and personalisation to in-person interactions that has never existed before,” he notes.
Unlike competitors that rely heavily on bots, such as EliseAI (AI leasing chatbots) or Ylopo (lead-generation automation), Grotto supports leasing teams rather than replacing them. It focuses on the key human moments that can’t be automated, helping boost conversion rates by 35 to 48%.
What’s next?
Grotto plans to scale alongside leading multifamily operators, expanding real-time guidance across more interactions and refining models as datasets grow.
Deveau concludes, “As the world becomes increasingly AI-first, we’re staunch in our belief that using AI to help humans shine at the things only they can do – build rapport and relationships – will be one of the highest ROI activities that businesses can do to differentiate and compete. “
