Elio Mortgage, a New York firm that operates its own licensed lending business using an in-house AI platform, has launched publicly after securing $5.1m in pre-seed funding.
Motive Partners and Social Leverage jointly led the investment, with Insight Partners co-founder and managing director Jeff Horing participating as an angel investor. Elio will use the funding for product development, expansion of its licensed operations across the US and the hiring of loan officers.
The company was founded by Oren Michaely and Arad Lev Ari. Michaely previously worked as an engineer at Microsoft and later served as director of AI at Motive Partners, while Lev Ari held roles in real estate investment and investment banking at KKR and Deutsche Bank.
Elio says mortgage technology has historically focused on individual stages of the origination process, leaving staff to connect separate systems and processes manually. The company develops its platform within its mortgage operation, with engineers working alongside loan officers as the technology is built around day-to-day lending workflows.
Rather than operating as a software vendor, Elio runs as a licensed mortgage business with an agentic platform at the centre of its model. The technology is designed to allow loan officers to spend more time on client relationships, advice and decision-making while handling more borrowers and building their client books.
Elio says its approach is intended to change how mortgage origination work is carried out and the cost of originating loans for borrowers and loan officers.
The company also offers Elio Embedded, through which registered investment advisers, estate agents, housebuilders and owners of single-family rental portfolios can provide mortgage services to their customers without establishing their own lending operation.
These businesses already have customer relationships and demand for home financing. Elio Embedded allows them to offer mortgage services through those existing relationships.
Elio Mortgage CEO and co-founder Oren Michaely said, “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.”
Motive Partners partner, venture Harsh Govil added, “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.”
Social Leverage managing director Matt Ober also commented, “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.”
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