AI-Driven Platform Rentana Closes $5M Seed Round

Rentana, an artificial intelligence-driven revenue platform for multifamily owners and operators, announced Tuesday that it closed a nearly $5 million seed round to grow its revenue optimization service.

Proptech venture capital firms Zigg Capital and Benchstrength led the round.

Rentana’s platform seeks to improve how property managers set their pricing and portfolio strategy, according to the company’s funding announcement. Its AI technology analyzes public market trends alongside each customer’s private rental data to provide insights exclusively for that customer’s individual use. The technology pairing enables Rentana to deliver real-time pricing recommendations, anticipate lease turnover, and predict revenue opportunities. The end result aims to help customers make more informed decisions, maximize occupancy, and stay ahead of market shifts. 

“We’re driving efficiencies, allowing real estate owners and operators to reach their goals, and giving them exactly what they need to stay on top of today’s market,” said Julie Blanc, co-founder and CEO of Rentana.

Rentana was founded in 2023 and is headquartered in Oakland, Calif. Blanc and her co-founders had a venture capital background prior to becoming proptech entrepreneurs.

”We all have experience updating outdated industries and transforming industry work,” said Blanc. “So this was early at Stripe, reimagining payments and payment rails. Another was early at Airtable, reimagining organizational databases, and part of our co-founding team built proptech software that now powers Airbnb and AppFolio.

“We saw this technology around optimizing revenue and performance that was transforming airlines, hotels and e-commerce. And I thought it would be a great opportunity in the real estate market. We had not seen a modern platform around that opportunity, so we applied our experience with prior industries towards our work.”

Having started her VC career with Insight Partners, a global software investor in growth-stage technology and software companies, Blanc built on her relationship with her former business partner there, John Monagle, who became co-founder and managing partner at Benchstrength, which invested in Rentana.

“Legacy revenue management systems simply aren’t keeping pace with today’s market realities,” Monagle said in a statement. “Rentana is delivering a long-overdue solution — one that finally gives property owners the speed, intelligence and adaptability they need to compete effectively.”

VC-proptech entrepreneur networks are relatively unusual, said Blanc.

“I definitely think it’s growing,” she said. “I think it’s rare, but I think it’s growing. There’s more people like myself who had the privilege of starting their careers in venture capital, and to be around founders at the forefront of emerging technology and see that be put into practice.”

Along with Blanc’s VC legacy connection to Benchstrength, while a partner at venture capital firm Two Sigma she backed Dave Eisenberg’s proptech startup Floored, which CBRE eventually acquired.

Turnabout, it turned out, was not only fair but opportunistic play for Blanc and Eisenberg.

“Real estate is mostly still operating on 1970s-1990s technology,” Eisenberg, co-founder of Zigg Capital, said in a statement. “Revenue management was no exception — until now. Rentana’s advanced, modern AI technology is propelling the industry into the digital era, providing real estate leaders the tools to make smarter, faster decisions that drive growth and efficiency.”

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