Blooma founder Shayne Skaff (LinkedIn, iStock)
Blooma, a startup that wants to speed up commercial real estate lending by using AI, closed on a $15 million funding round.
Canapi Ventures and existing investor Nyca Partners led the Series A, Blooma announced Tuesday.
Founded in 2018, the San Diego-based company seeks to help banks and nonbanks originate real estate loans faster through its AI-powered technology. Blooma founder Shayne Skaff said this technology automates metrics like sales and valuations for underwriters and analysts.
Today, Skaff said many lenders still use Microsoft Excel to compute these metrics, which is time consuming and ultimately costlier for the lender.
“Our value proposition is one of efficiency and increased production,” he said.
Blooma extracts data through its technology from a variety of sources, including tax assessor’s office, Moody’s and real estate owners, according to Skaff. He said Blooma can also monitor and audit loans as well as perform stress testing and borrower analysis.
The startup claims that lenders on the system have reduced loan origination time of up to 75 percent, allowing for 50 percent more transactions. Blooma says its platform has analyzed over $12 billion in deals over the past year. Its clients include C3 Bank, Bank of Southern California and CBRE.
In the future, the company could expand to residential real estate lending and loan syndication, said Skaff. The latest investment will allow the company to scale up and hire more staff.
More money is going into ways to expedite traditional processes in real estate such as mortgage lending, title insurance or home closings. This year, insurance startup Doma announced plans to go public in a $3 billion SPAC merger, as did mortgage lender Better.
