The short-term rental market struggles with managing high volumes of guest communication, automating repetitive workflows, and optimising operational efficiency for large property portfolios. Conduit, an AI-powered operating system revolutionising residential property management, addresses these challenges by automating guest interactions, streamlining workflows, analysing market data for strategic insights, and scaling operations efficiently for property managers.
Conduit has secured $3.1 million in seed funding to expand its full-cycle tenant engagement platform worldwide, with a new focus on hotels and long-term rentals. London-based VC Pi Labs led the round, including participation from Y Combinator, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, Snapdocs founder Aaron King, and other prominent angel investors.
The seed funding will support product development and accelerate growth into new markets. With its rapidly growing client base and shift toward long-term rentals, Conduit aims to become the leading AI platform for full-cycle tenant engagement.
Automating tenant engagement: AI-driven property management across 20,000 listings
At the start of last year, Conduit was founded as Host AI by short-term rental veteran Cole Rubin. He previously managed his $19 million residential portfolio, comprising 200 sites across Airbnb and Booking.com. Cole’s firsthand experience managing numerous rental properties revealed the operational inefficiencies in manual tenant communication and property management.
The platform automatically handles messages and assists customers through the booking platform from inquiry to checkout, requiring minimal manual oversight. As an official Airbnb software partner, its AI solution manages leasing inquiries, guest communications, and maintenance workflows for owners and managers during and between tenancies.
Conduit streamlines property management by automating communication and workflows across the rental lifecycle, from leasing inquiries and tenant onboarding to maintenance requests and renewals. The platform enhances efficiency and tenant satisfaction with minimal human oversight, directly improving property managers’ ratings on platforms like Airbnb. Currently, over 20,000 properties worldwide rely on Conduit’s AI technology.
Behind Conduit: Automating more than 90% of guest communications
Conduit automates over 90% of guest communications, proving invaluable for companies managing multiple properties and listings. The market opportunity is substantial, with the global short-term rental market valued at $131.4 billion and projected to reach $341.9 billion by 2033.
Cole Rubin, CEO of Conduit, commented: “The residential rental market is becoming increasingly professionalised and management companies understand that their success is dependent on customer ratings. Having previously been in this world for years across the major platforms, the pain point was obvious. It was becoming impossible to scale whilst maintaining a uniformed, high-quality service with such high guest turnover and the sheer volume of communications.
With Conduit, almost all customer communications can be automated, which is invaluable to any host or manager with more than just a handful of listings. Many of our clients today manage thousands of properties and the integration via the booking platforms has been seamless, often directly translating to improved customer reviews.”
The company has secured an impressive global client portfolio, including UK-based Airbnb management firm Pass the Keys, Australia’s Moxxi (which also manages listings on Airbnb and Booking.com), Germany’s vacation rental platform Arbio Group, Dubai-based Silkhuas, and London’s Flex Living. These firms all manage large property portfolios.
Faisal Butt, Managing Partner and Founder of Pi Labs, said: “Conduit is a game changer in the hospitality and residential industry, evidenced by how quickly they have penetrated numerous major markets. Cole and Punn are AI native founders that have an in-depth understanding of how AI can positively transform the rental sector, which is growing globally given the large number of companies entering this space. We believe Conduit could become the most widely used application to manage residential real estate at scale, since the advanced AI algorithms embedded into the platform offers clients both cost saving benefits and the ability to consistently ensure a better customer experience.”
