Venn Acquires Leasing Agent Company Zuma for $50M

Multifamily operating platform Venn acquired Zuma, a leasing company that uses agentic artificial intelligence, for $50 million.

Founded in Tel Aviv and based in Manhattan, Venn is a sovereign — or bespoke — AI company connecting residents and buildings on a sole system, said Or Bokobza, its CEO.

“We build what we call your company brain,” Bokobza said. “And we will never commercialize or share your data. What we build is specifically bespoke for you.”

Venn serves more than 270 multifamily owners and operators across five countries and 30 U.S. states, including Bozzuto, Related Companies, Kairoi Residential and Grand City Properties. The company expects to pass 1 million units under management by year end. Its contracted revenue has more than quadrupled over the past year, said Bokobza.

Venn has raised more than $140 million, including a $52 million Series B round co-led by NOA and Group 11. 

Founded in 2021, Santa Monica, Calif.-based Zuma is a leader in agentic AI for multifamily, used by operators for leasing, renewals and collections. It is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator and King River & Capital.

Venn’s acquisition of Zuma came about over time as Bokobza became fascinated with the latter company’s technological sophistication.

“I’ve known the founders for quite some time, and I was very impressed by their team,” said Bokobza. “This opened a whole world for me — the fact that there are more companies who really care deeply about the tech itself, that they are here to stay and not just trying to be bought by another giant.

“I started to learn more and more about their machine learning team, data scientists and their infrastructure people. Their company is very heavy on technology, and that’s made me very excited about the talent. Then I got to know the product, and I was extremely impressed. I was under the impression that they are only focusing on lead nurturing, which is a capability that we have. But I learned that they have a deep expertise in everything leasing, and they basically build an intelligent layer where they are able to run agents on top of the intelligent layer, specifically in leasing.”

Shiv Gettu, co-founder of Zuma, and Kendrick Bradley, chief product officer and co-founder, have moved to New York City to join Venn, Bokobza said. Gettu is running strategic partnerships for Venn, while Bradley is executive general manager for the company’s leasing practice.

“What became clear very quickly was how much bigger the opportunity could be together,” Gettu said at the time of the acquisition. “Venn had built the infrastructure to take our specialization in marketing and leasing across the entire real estate sector. The more time we spent with Or and the team, the more obvious the alignment became. We think about customers the same way, we build close to the business, and we believe the future belongs to technology that reflects what makes each operator unique. Add Venn’s growth, customer base and technical talent, and it felt like an opportunity to build at a completely different scale.”

Philip Russo can be reached at prusso@commercialobserver.com.