We're excited to share that we've raised a $2.9M seed round to build Ralo, the first AI-native mortgage broker. The round comes from Y Combinator, Manresa Ventures, Pack Ventures, and angels we deeply admire, including Charles Ferguson, the Oscar-winning director of Inside Job, and Ryan Frazier, co-founder and CEO of Arrived.
This funding lets us take on the mortgage industry at the scale the problem deserves.
Why we built Ralo
If you've ever gotten a mortgage, you know the process is stuck in the '90s: emailing PDFs, chasing paperwork, and bouncing between loan officers just to compare a single rate. It's also extremely expensive. It costs the average lender about $11,800 to process a single mortgage, routed through a half-dozen middlemen who each take a cut and the borrower pays for all of it through a higher rate. The overhead was never a feature. It was a tax.
So we got licensed as loan officers ourselves, learned the industry from the inside, and taught it to AI. Now the work of a dozen middlemen happens at a fraction of the cost, and the savings go where they belong: to the borrower. The result is a rate more than half a point below the national average, and a closing in about 15 days instead of 30 to 45.
What this raise lets us build
Every dollar of this round goes toward one thing: getting affordable mortgages into the hands of more homebuyers, faster. Concretely, that means:
- Building a smarter product — Our AI gets better with every transaction it handles, and we're extending it to cover more of the mortgage journey end to end. Both compound into lower costs and a smoother experience over time for homebuyers.
- Building a brand homebuyers trust — Most people have never heard there's a better way to get a mortgage, so a big part of this is getting the word out. We're investing in reaching the homebuyers who'd benefit most and building the kind of name people feel confident recommending to people they trust the most.
- Expanding to more states — We're licensed today in California, Colorado, and Texas. Going forward, we're strategically expanding into new markets where we can save homebuyers the most on their mortgage.
- Growing the team — We're a tiny crew with an enormous mandate. This funding lets us expand the team to bring in the right people who'll help us scale.
It all ladders up to a single mission: to make mortgages affordable by cutting out everything that made them expensive.
The future of American mortgages
A home is the biggest purchase most homebuyers will ever make. It shouldn't come with a hidden tax for the privilege of navigating a maze someone else built. We're building toward a future where an affordable, transparent, genuinely simple mortgage is just how it works for every homebuyer in America.
Come build it with us
We are a tiny team with an enormous amount to do, and we're hiring. We're looking for the right team to take a swing at fixing one of the most broken corners of consumer finance.
