Elio Mortgage emerged from stealth with $5.1 million in pre-seed funding to build an AI-native mortgage company focused on redesigning how home loans are originated. The round was led by Motive Partners and Social Leverage, with participation from Jeff Horing, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Insight Partners, as an angel investor.
Elio was founded by Oren Michaely and Arad Lev Ari.
Michaely’s background includes engineering at Microsoft and serving as Director of AI at Motive Partners.
Lev Ari previously worked in real estate investing and investment banking at KKR and Deutsche Bank.
Elio is developing its mortgage operation around a proprietary AI-native platform designed to rethink the origination process from end to end rather than automate individual tasks in isolation.
The company said traditional mortgage technology has largely focused on improving separate components of the origination workflow, leaving loan officers and operations teams responsible for connecting fragmented systems and processes.
Elio is taking a different approach by building its technology directly inside a functioning mortgage operation.
Engineers and loan officers work alongside one another, allowing the company to design its platform around live mortgage workflows and operational needs.
Elio’s goal is to use AI to change how work is divided between people and technology, improve organizational efficiency, reduce the cost of originating a loan, and create a better experience for borrowers.
The funding will support continued product development, expansion of Elio’s licensed mortgage operations nationwide, and recruitment of additional loan officers as the company scales its brokerage model.
Elio is also building an embedded mortgage offering for businesses that already have established customer relationships and mortgage demand.
Through that model, Elio plans to serve as the mortgage arm for financial advisors, real estate agents, home builders, and institutional owners of single-family rental portfolios.
The offering is designed to allow those businesses to provide mortgage services to their customers without having to build and operate their own mortgage origination infrastructure.
Within Elio’s brokerage, the platform is intended to give loan officers greater operating leverage by automating and coordinating parts of the origination process while allowing them to concentrate on relationships, advice, and judgment.
The company believes this approach can enable loan officers to serve more borrowers while expanding their individual books of business.
Elio’s embedded strategy extends the same infrastructure to outside partners, allowing them to capture mortgage demand already flowing through their businesses while relying on Elio to handle the operational complexity of originating home loans.
The company plans to use the new capital to continue developing the platform as it expands its national footprint and builds out both its direct brokerage and embedded distribution channels.
KEY QUOTES:
“Mortgage is one of the largest financial markets in the world, yet the way loans are originated has changed remarkably little. The industry has spent years digitizing individual processes, but people are still responsible for stitching those processes together. AI gives us the opportunity to redesign the entire origination model, changing how work is divided between people and technology, how organizations are structured, the cost of originating a loan, and the borrower experience. We’re building Elio to show what a fundamentally better mortgage company can look like.”
Oren Michaely, CEO and Co-Founder of Elio Mortgage
“The next generation of financial services are being built around AI, with intelligence systems coordinating and executing work across the business rather than automating isolated tasks. In truly AI-native companies, the technology largely disappears into the operating model, while customers and employees experience a fundamentally faster and improved service. We believe Elio represents that shift in mortgage, an industry where we see enormous opportunity to redesign operations and economics.”
Harsh Govil, Partner, Venture at Motive Partners
“We invest in founders who challenge entrenched industries with new business models, and Elio represents exactly that kind of opportunity. By combining an AI-native operating model with an embedded distribution strategy, Elio enables financial advisors and other businesses with trusted customer relationships to make mortgage financing a seamless extension of the services they already provide. We look forward to supporting them as they redefine how borrowers access home financing.”
Matt Ober, Managing Director at Social Leverage
