Multi-family operating platform Venn has acquired Zuma, a lettings firm that leverages agentic artificial intelligence, for $50 million. Venn, founded in Tel Aviv and headquartered in Manhattan, describes itself as a company that uses bespoke AI to connect residents and buildings within a single system, as CEO Or Bokobza explained.
Bokobza describes Venn's development: "We're building what we call your corporate brain. We will never commercialise or share your data. What we're developing is bespoke to you." Venn serves more than 270 multi-family property owners and operators across five countries and 30 US states, including companies such as Bozzuto, Related Companies, Kairoi Residential, and Grand City Properties. The company expects to have over 1 million managed units by the end of the year. Contracted revenue has more than quadrupled over the past year, according to Bokobza. Venn has raised over $140 million in capital to date, including a Series B round of $52 million co-led by NOA and Group 11.
Technological Expertise as a Driving Force
Founded in 2021 and based in Santa Monica, California, Zuma is a leading provider of agentic AI for the multi-family sector, used by operators for lettings, renewals, and collections. It is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, and King River & Capital. Venn's acquisition of Zuma evolved over time, as Bokobza was fascinated by the company's technological sophistication. "I've known the founders for quite some time, and I was highly impressed with their team," Bokobza said.
He added that he was particularly impressed by their deep expertise in technology: "This opened up a whole new world to me – the fact that there are other companies that really deeply care about the technology itself, who are here to stay and aren't just trying to be bought by another giant. I started to learn more and more about their machine learning team, their data scientists, and their infrastructure people. Their company is very technology-heavy, and that made me excited about the talent. Then I got to know the product and was extremely impressed. I had the impression that they were only focused on lead nurturing, which is a skill we already possess. But I learned that they have profound expertise in all aspects of lettings and essentially build an intelligent layer upon which they can deploy specialised agents for lettings."
Future Collaboration and Synergies
Shiv Gettu, co-founder of Zuma, and Kendrick Bradley, Chief Product Officer and co-founder, have moved to New York City to join Venn, as Bokobza announced. Gettu leads strategic partnerships for Venn, while Bradley is responsible for the company's lettings division as Executive General Manager. Gettu commented on the acquisition, stating: "It quickly became clear how much bigger the combined opportunity could be. Venn had built the infrastructure to scale our specialisation in marketing and lettings across the entire property sector. The more time we spent with Or and the team, the more obvious the alignment became. We think about customers in the same way, we operate close to the business, and we believe the future belongs to technology that reflects what makes each operator unique. Adding Venn's growth, customer base, and technical talent, it felt like an opportunity to build on a completely different scale."
