Dwelly, an AI-enabled rollup of letting agencies that transforms the entire rental lifecycle through technology, raised £69 million ($94 million) in equity and debt funding.
The funding aims to support its rapid growth through a series of M&A deals across the UK.
The capital raise includes a £32 million equity round led by global investment and transformation company, General Catalyst, one of Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital firms, with the participation of Begin Capital and S16VC, and a £37 million debt facility from Trinity Capital.
Since 2024, Dwelly has acquired and digitised independent rental agencies through an AI-enabled roll-up model. Dwelly leverages advanced AI to significantly enhance the user experience throughout the entire letting cycle, streamlining tenant-landlord matchmaking, maintenance, and rent collection.
Strategic Acquisitions
Dwelly aims to consolidate the UK’s highly fragmented letting market, which generates over £100 billion in rent roll and £10 billion in annual commissions. Yet, the UK residential rental and property management sector remains highly labour-intensive and administrative. Around 20,000 firms operate in this space, with the top 100 firms accounting for less than 30% of the approximately 5.5 million rental properties across the country. Many of these firms are small or independently owned, often lacking modern systems and tools.
After less than a year of extensive M&A efforts, Dwelly has already acquired 8 agencies across the UK and currently manages over £200m in GMV. Dwelly offers a fair and transparent process for agency owners planning an exit from the sector. It provides competitive valuations, clear deal terms, and a commitment to preserving the agency’s brand and client relationships, allowing the owners to retire when they wish.
After an acquisition, Dwelly integrates its AI-enabled operating system to automate key functions, reduce manual overhead, and standardise service quality. By increasing the number of agencies and properties under management, Dwelly gains more data to further train and improve its AI automations.
“We have crossed 10,000 properties under management, placing us among the UK’s top 15 largest letting agencies in less than two 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.
“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.
Elevated Matchmaking
Dwelly’s AI streamlines the deals between landlords and tenants. Beyond listing a unit, it also verifies backgrounds and property details, executes contracts, handles payments, maintains the unit during occupancy, manages move-outs, and recalibrates pricing for the next letting. Traditionally, each stage introduced friction, delay, and potential mismatches.
Dwelly’s technology enhances every stage of this journey. It allows applicants to generate an average of 10 validated offers per property, a significant leap from the 1-2 a traditional agency typically receives. AI has boosted efficiency, reducing letting times by a third. This not only accelerates transactions but also creates a more transparent, competitive environment where properties are matched on merit. By removing selection bias, Dwelly shifts the process to a “best offer wins” model that benefits both landlords and tenants.
Enhanced Maintenance
Dwelly’s AI transforms property management with 24/7 tenant chatbots, automated request sorting, and clear communication with maintenance teams.
In the UK letting industry, maintenance requests take an average of 50 days. Dwelly’s AI has brought this figure down by 33% so far, with a projected reduction of more than 70%. This creates a fairer, more transparent process for tenants and drastically speeds up maintenance. Dwelly is further optimising this by ensuring tasks are never overlooked, with AI actively tracking and following up with maintenance providers.
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 the tenant experience, landlord economics, and agency efficiency simultaneously. 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.
“Dwelly exemplifies what we look for – founders with proven track records at Uber and Gett, now consolidating a massive, fragmented market through strategic acquisitions and AI-powered operations. They’ve reached top-15 scale in under two years while improving outcomes across the board. We back teams who know transformation requires relentless execution,” said Marc Bhargava, Managing Director at General Catalyst.
Founders Team
Dwelly was founded by a team of seasoned entrepreneurs with deep expertise in operations, technology, consumer products, and finance.
Ilya Drozdov, сo-founder and CEO, previously served as General Manager at Uber and co-founded a tech-enabled rental agency that scaled to 10,000 apartments and £50M in GMV.
Dan Lifshits, сo-founder and CPO, brings a strong track record from his time as GM and Global VP at Gett, where he managed £200M in GMV and delivered £20M in EBITDA. He also became the youngest Associate at McKinsey EU.
Dmitry Khanukov, co-founder and CTO, played a major technology role on projects at Uber, developing recruitment and onboarding systems across EMEA. Together, the team combines high-growth startup experience with operational depth in real estate, mobility, and technology.
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