Purlin Closes Seed Round and Announces Strategic Relationship With Douglas Elliman
This article originally appeared on redwoodtrust.com
LOS ANGELES, January 11, 2022 (Newswire.com) – Purlin Co. (www.purlin.com) announced today that New Valley Ventures, the property technology investment vehicle of Douglas Elliman Inc. (NYSE: DOUG), along with Redwood Trust Inc. (NYSE: RWT), through its strategic venture investment platform, RWT Horizons, and angel investors, affiliated with the Band of Angels, have invested a combined $1.5 million in the AI-driven real estate and fintech start-up. Alongside the investment, Douglas Elliman announced that it had signed an agreement under which Purlin’s technology will power systems used by their 6,600 agents and 46,000 annual clients. “Purlin is a core component of our strategy to use technology-enabled services to simplify our agents’ business as it relates to AI and home-search while unlocking great value for shareholders,” said Scott Durkin, CEO of Douglas Elliman Realty, LLC. Dan Sachar, Managing Director of New Valley Ventures, added, “Purlin challenges the status quo through innovation that enables high-quality service. Purlin’s AI platform will help all of Elliman’s agents build and run their businesses as well as set the bar for best-in-class, intelligently personalized home search experiences.”
Purlin is the first company to combine together AI, machine learning, and natural language processing with image recognition to sort through millions of listing photographs and identify the specific rooms, features, and styles that will most appeal to a given buyer. The result is a client experience in which buyers see houses they want to buy, rather than the endless tide of listings, in a given price range and geography provided by traditional search sites.
Purlin’s technology platform is also the first to allow listing agents to proactively identify and directly engage active buyers most likely to buy a specific property by effectively running that same consumer-facing preference engine in reverse. This represents a sea-change in how agents market listings and attract clients both in terms of process efficiency and service levels.
The strategic investment from RWT Horizons validates Purlin’s roadmap as the company leverages its platform to support the entire homebuying process. “Purlin’s AI platform has the potential to transform the largest transaction for most people, and that is buying or selling their home,” said Ryan McBride, Chief Investment Officer of RWT Horizons and COO of CoreVest, a division of Redwood Trust. “Purlin’s technology extends beyond the broker to escrow, title, and mortgage finance. The company’s platform has the potential to disrupt the status quo and this aligns with our RWT Horizons portfolio and overall strategy of leveraging technology to transform how parties transact across the real estate and financial sectors. We are excited about the current and potential advancements Purlin’s technology brings to the home buying process.”
“A few years ago, we embarked on a mission to deliver on the promise of AI in real estate, to elevate the experience for buyers and sellers, for brokers serving them, and for everyone else who touches the transaction. Our new partnerships with Douglas Elliman and Redwood Trust prove that our mission and roadmap are resonating,” said Giorgi Chigogidze, CEO of Purlin.
“Our team has unique, end-to-end capabilities spanning from designing engaging user experiences to generating first-party data,” said Ilya Dorfman, CTO and CISO for Purlin, adding, “which allows us to harness the full power of AI in real estate.”
“Purlin flips the real estate script by using AI to enable agents to heighten emotional value of client experiences beyond expectation,” said Chris Steege, CMO and CSO of Purlin, concluding, “the emotional value proposition always wins.”
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