Dwelly raises over €79.3 million to expand its AI-powered rental marketplace

The funding package includes a €36.8 million equity round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Begin Capital and S16VC. It also features a €42.55 million debt facility from Trinity Capital. The new capital will help fuel a continued wave of acquisitions in one of the UK’s most fragmented service industries.

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Founded in 2024, Dwelly follows an AI-enabled roll-up strategy, purchasing independent rental agencies and bringing them onto a single technology-driven platform. The company’s goal is to simplify the entire letting process — from matching tenants and landlords to coordinating maintenance, collecting rent, and optimising pricing.

Bringing together a highly fragmented £100 billion market

The UK letting market generates more than €115 billion in rent roll each year and around €11.5 billion in annual commissions. Despite its size, the sector remains highly labour-intensive and operationally complex. Nearly 20,000 firms operate across the country, and the top 100 account for less than 30% of the approximately 5.5 million rental properties nationwide.

In under a year of M&A activity, Dwelly has acquired eight agencies across the UK and now manages more than €230 million in gross merchandise value. The company says it provides agency owners with competitive valuations and transparent deal structures, while maintaining their existing brands and client relationships after acquisition.

After each deal, Dwelly deploys its AI-powered operating system to automate core processes, cut down manual tasks, and standardise service quality. As its portfolio expands, the company also uses aggregated operational data to continuously train and improve its AI models.

“We have crossed 10,000 properties under management, placing Dwelly among the UK’s top 15 largest letting agencies in less than 2 years – an unseen speed of growth for letting agencies. Our vision is to build an end-to-end platform evolving into a fully transactional rental marketplace with a robust fintech layer for rent collection and ancillary products,” said Ilya Drozdov, co-founder and CEO of Dwelly.

“AI is shaking up industries. The UK’s letting market is the perfect target for AI to simplify operations, boost tenant satisfaction, and skyrocket agent output. Dwelly leverages AI to supercharge agency performance and empower staff with smart tools, streamlining landlord-tenant-agency interactions for better efficiency and customer experience,” said Dan Lifshits, co-founder and CPO of Dwelly.

Reworking matchmaking and maintenance

Dwelly applies AI throughout every stage of the rental journey. In addition to listing properties, its platform handles background checks, digital contract signing, payments, in-tenancy maintenance coordination, move-outs, and dynamic rent repricing.

The company says its system allows applicants to generate an average of 10 verified offers per property, compared with the one or two offers typically received through traditional agencies. It also reports reducing letting times by around one-third, moving toward a more transparent “best offer wins” approach.

On the property management side, Dwelly uses 24/7 tenant chatbots, automated request triaging, and structured communication with maintenance providers. In a market where maintenance issues can take about 50 days on average to resolve, the company claims it has already cut this timeline by 33%, with a goal of reducing it by more than 70% as the platform continues to improve.

“Dwelly is transforming one of the UK’s most fragmented and operationally demanding service sectors into a modern, AI-powered system. Their platform converts thousands of analogue, agency-level processes into scalable software, improving tenant experience, landlord economics, and agency efficiency all at once. We believe this combination of deep industry expertise, disciplined execution, and a systems-level AI architecture positions Dwelly to reshape how rental markets operate. It’s exactly the kind of enduring, technology-led transformation General Catalyst is committed to backing,” said Zeynep Yavuz, Partner at General Catalyst.