OJO Labs has raised $20.5 million in Series B funding to supercharge the rollout of its products, which empower consumers to make better decisions. Investors in the round consist of a unique combination of real estate brokerage, financial, and home service leaders including Realogy Holdings Corp., Royal Bank of Canada, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and ServiceMaster. This group of industry-leading companies serves tens of millions of consumers and are joined in the round by leading Texas venture capital firms LiveOak Venture Partners and Silverton Partners.

The company has a patent pending AI technology that solves the biggest problem plaguing the development of intelligent, conversational systems. “Consumers will not engage with these technologies unless they are personalized and intelligent, but to make the system intelligent requires millions of conversations,” said David Rubin, Co-founder of OJO Labs. “Our unparalleled, real-time supervised learning platform solves this problem. By combining natural language understanding with unique visual experiences and personalization, the product allows consumers to deeply engage in a purchase process prior to interacting with a salesperson.”

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The first application of the technology, OJO, is the only AI-based assistant that can understand a user’s intent and preferences to answer almost any real estate related question. Interacting on behalf of real estate agents and brokerages, OJO is available 24/7 to help consumers with questions, home search needs, mortgage information and other resources related to the homeownership journey. Engaging the consumer in a two-way dialogue over an extended period of time provides OJO with key insights that it can then share with a real estate agent when the consumer is ready and chooses to connect. This trusted, nurtured connection creates a mutually beneficial experience for the consumer and agent.

“It has been three years since we founded OJO Labs and laid the foundation for our vision of a customized experience for millions of consumers. In that time, we have made significant progress in solving the hard technical and operational barriers prevalent in our space, and this has led to considerable competitive advantages today,” said John Berkowitz, CEO of OJO Labs. “While we are proud of our progress to date, creating a conversational AI that has access to the best data and human experts will be a challenging journey. Thankfully, we have an unrivalled team, a considerable head start and the will to accomplish our vision no matter the difficulty.”

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Since raising their Series A funding in 2016, OJO Labs has been going through a rigorous process of testing and optimization, including processing millions of pieces of photographic and conversational real estate data. With a proven product and successful pilots behind them, the company is leveraging the power of its patent-pending AI system by partnering with some of the world’s most influential real estate and financial services players.

With this latest round of funding, OJO Labs will focus on growing its product, data science and engineering teams. Spearheading this effort is Peter Kappler, a former Google engineer who was instrumental in developing the AdWords platform and opening Google’s Austin office in 2007. “I’ve looked at numerous technology startup opportunities since I retired from Google, but none as exciting as OJO Labs. I chose to join and help build this company because this technology and team are tackling serious problems by providing a level of personalization at a scale previously unachievable,” shares Kappler.

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