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Real estate tech startup OJO Labs raises $62.5 million, acquires Movoto – HousingWire


Real estate tech startup OJO Labs announced Tuesday the close of a $62.5 million funding round and the acquisition of Movoto, a residential real estate search site.

With the latest financing, OJO Labs has now raised a known $134 million in venture funding since its 2015 inception, according to Crunchbase. Wafra led the latest investment, which also included participation from Breyer Capital, LiveOak Venture Partners, Royal Bank of Canada and Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures

Acquiring other startups is clearly a key part of Austin-based OJO Labs’ growth strategy. The company, which combines human and machine intelligence to provide personalized property recommendations and insights, also acquired real estate software platform RealSavvy last October. OJO Labs also picked up WolfNet Technologies in October 2018.

It did not reveal how much it’s paying for Movoto, only noting that the San Mateo-based company is the “fastest-growing top 5 residential real estate search site in the United States with nearly 24 million monthly visits.”

OJO Labs says it serves as a strategic partner for brokers, agents, and loan officers. The company believes there continues to be a big gap between the initiation of self-guided online search and the moment a consumer is ready to deeply engage with an agent. Its purchase of Movoto will help boost its capabilities, the company said in a statement.

John Berkowitz, CEO and cofounder of OJO Labs, said Movoto’s ability to optimize search based on consumer behavior and engagement has enabled it “to compete with three massive, publicly traded companies while steadily gaining market share since 2018.”

“Movoto’s consumer-first search site combined with OJO Labs’ AI advisor marks a completely new experience that will change the way we buy and sell homes forever,” he added.

Jim Breyer, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, believes the way people buy and sell homes has been changing for some time. That evolution, he said, has been expedited in the wake of COVID-19.

“I believe OJO Labs is poised to be a leader in the next era of the homebuying industry,” he said in a written statement.

Meanwhile, the use of AI chatbots is becoming more common in real estate. Other players include CINC, which aims to revolutionize the lead generation process.

We’ve reached out to OJO Labs for more specifics and will update this story when we get them.



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