OJO Labs raises $62.5M

OJO Labs raises $62.5M, acquires residential search site Movoto

“OJO Labs, the real estate technology startup behind OJO, an artificial intelligence-powered virtual home shopping assistant, has raised a new round of $62.5 million in both equity and debt funding, the majority of which is equity funding, it announced Wednesday.

The company is also acquiring Movoto, a growing residential search website that says it has more than 24 million monthly visits.

We have large ambitions and those ambitions are only exciting if they get realized at scale,” John Berkowitz, the CEO and co-founder of OJO Labs, told Inman. “What this allows us to do is be able to really innovate and create a better experience from the very beginning of home search all the way to living in the home and innovate along that entire journey within completely our control and autonomy.”

No purchase price is given for Movoto. And the $62.5M in a combination of equity and debt (loan), which brings their total raise (equity and debt) to $134M. Remember equity you don’t have to pay back, debt you do. Even if the majority was equity, so let’s make that $32M in equity and $30.5M in debt. Movoto had previously raised $8M. VCs would love a 10X return, but that obviously isn’t happening here. But 24M unique visitors (even if it’s peak COVID stats) is impressive.

So I think the VCs are just moving their Movoto chips to OJO, with a modest 2X multiple ($16M) payout and hoping for another bite at the apple.

But I’m always surprised how much money is being thrown around so I could be (meaning I am) wrong.