Dwelly secures £69m to consolidate fragmented rental market and scale AI marketplace
This article covers Dwelly, a proptech startup, which has raised £69m in a growth funding round to accelerate its roll-up of independent letting agencies and scale an AI-driven rental marketplace across the UK. The funding will finance further M&A and product development to expand its AI-enabled property management and fintech services, aiming to consolidate the fragmented UK private rented sector and support letting agencies, landlords and tenants.
Dwelly has raised £69 million in a growth funding round to accelerate its roll-up of independent letting agencies and scale an AI-driven rental marketplace across the UK. The capital will fund further M&A activity and product development as the company seeks to digitise a highly fragmented rental market and expand its property management and fintech capabilities.
Why it matters
The UK private rented sector is large and fragmented: about 5.5 million rental properties, an estimated £100 billion in rent roll and roughly £10 billion in annual commissions, serviced by around 20,000 agencies. That fragmentation presents an efficiency problem and an opportunity for consolidation and software-led improvement in operations and tenant experience.
Dwelly says it has moved quickly: after less than a year of acquisitions it has bought eight agencies, manages more than £200 million in gross merchandise value and has crossed 10,000 properties under management, putting it among the top 15 letting agencies by size in under two years. If those figures hold, they illustrate how a targeted roll-up plus standardised software can rapidly aggregate inventory and data — which is central to the company’s product and growth thesis.
Inside the product
Dwelly positions itself as an AI-enabled operating system for letting agencies. The platform is deployed after acquisitions to automate routine tasks, standardise service levels and give agency staff AI-assisted tools. Key product claims include:
- Matchmaking and offers: applicants generate an average of 10 validated offers per property versus the typical 1–2 in traditional agencies, and letting times are down by about a third.
- End-to-end workflow: the system covers background checks, contracts, payments, maintenance tracking, move-outs and repricing for subsequent lets.
- Maintenance and tenant communication: 24/7 chatbots, automated request sorting and AI-driven follow-up have reduced average resolution times by around 33% so far, with a stated target to exceed 70% reduction as processes mature.
Dwelly argues that adding more agencies increases data available to its models, creating a feedback loop to improve matching, pricing and operations. It also plans to layer fintech services — for rent collection and ancillary products — on top of its transactional marketplace ambitions.
Who are the investors?
The £69 million raise is structured as a combination of equity and debt. The equity portion is £32 million; General Catalyst led the round with participation from Begin Capital and S16VC. The remainder is a £37 million debt facility provided by Trinity Capital.
General Catalyst is a global venture firm with a track record of investing in marketplaces and infrastructure companies. In the announcement Zeynep Yavuz, Partner at General Catalyst, said:
Dwelly is transforming one of the UK’s most fragmented and operationally demanding service sectors into a modern, AI-powered system. Their platform converts thousands of analogue, agency-level processes into scalable software, improving tenant experience, landlord economics, and agency efficiency all at once. We believe this combination of deep industry expertise, disciplined execution, and a systems-level AI architecture positions Dwelly to reshape how rental markets operate. It’s exactly the kind of enduring, technology-led transformation General Catalyst is committed to backing.
Marc Bhargava, Managing Director at General Catalyst, added:
Dwelly exemplifies what we look for – founders with proven track records at Uber and Gett, now consolidating a massive, fragmented market through strategic acquisitions and AI-powered operations. They’ve reached top-15 scale in under two years while improving outcomes across the board. We back teams who know transformation requires relentless execution.
Trinity Capital provides the debt component; the firm focuses on tailored private credit for growth companies and has a history of financing technology-led businesses at scale. Begin Capital and S16VC participated on the equity side, joining General Catalyst in supporting Dwelly’s acquisition-driven expansion.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Ilya Drozdov, co-founder and CEO at Dwelly, said:
We have crossed 10,000 properties under management, placing Dwelly among the UK’s top 15 largest letting agencies in less than 2 years – an unseen speed of growth for letting agencies. Our vision is to build an end-to-end platform evolving into a fully transactional rental marketplace with a robust fintech layer for rent collection and ancillary products.
In the announcement, Dan Lifshits, co-founder and CPO at Dwelly, said:
AI is shaking up industries. The UK’s letting market is the perfect target for AI to simplify operations, boost tenant satisfaction, and skyrocket agent output. Dwelly leverages AI to supercharge agency performance and empower staff with smart tools, streamlining landlord-tenant-agency interactions for better efficiency and customer experience.
The founding team brings operational experience from mobility and marketplace businesses: Drozdov previously held senior roles at Uber and co-founded a tech-enabled rental agency, Lifshits worked at Gett and McKinsey, and Dmitry Khanukov, co-founder and CTO, has engineering experience from projects at Uber. The founders present the combination of acquisition experience and product-led operating model as core to executing a roll-up strategy.
The bigger picture
Dwelly’s raise underscores two converging themes in UK proptech: consolidation through roll-ups and increased use of AI to automate labour-intensive property management tasks. For investors, the appeal is a large, inefficient market where operational improvements and data surpluses can drive margins and product expansion, including fintech services.
The deal also reflects growing attention from proptech investors to business models that combine M&A with proprietary software, rather than pure organic growth. For landlords and tenants, the implications hinge on whether automation and marketplace dynamics genuinely speed access, reduce bias in tenant selection and improve maintenance outcomes.
As the UK rental market continues to attract capital, regulators and policymakers will watch how new entrants balance efficiency gains with tenant protections and local market dynamics. Dwelly’s raise and rapid aggregation of agencies are part of a broader European trend of digitally enabled consolidation in property management and marketplaces.
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