Start-up By Ex-Deliveroo Staff Raises $2Million

Jitty was launched this year after its founders had negative experiences purchasing a home

A start-up founded by three former early-stage Deliveroo staff has raised $2 million (£1.6 million) to fuel expansion for its AI-powered property search engine. Jitty was founded this year by CEO Graham Paterson, CPO James Storer and CTO Daniel Cooper after they had negative experiences purchasing a home.

The UK start-up is using large language models – the same type of technology underpinning chatbot ChatGPT – to understand home descriptions. It is using computer vision, another subset of AI, to interpret floor plans and pull this data onto its property search engine. The platform, which is targeting a mid-September launch, will also cross-reference information with publicly available data.

“We let people tell us exactly what type of home they want, and we’ll show them everything about every home that meets their requirements,” said Storer. “The current home-buying tools available to consumers optimise to show you as many homes as they can in a small area. Jitty optimises to show you all the best homes for you – the biggest purchase you ever make shouldn’t feel like guesswork.” Jitty will not charge estate agent fees and will provide tools for homebuyers to create and share notes on prospective homes with friends and family from within the platform.

The pre-seed funding was led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused fund. Further investment came from Sequoia, Atomico, True Global, Angel Invest and Tiny VC. The start-up also received capital from angel investors, including former Zoopla COO.

Jitty currently has a team of four people and claims to have 2,000 people on its waitlist. It plans to launch in the UK initially then enter European markets. It is one of a wave of start-ups embracing large language models, or LLMs, a form of AI that uses enormous datasets to recognise, summarise or generate content. “Artificial intelligence and specifically large language models are bringing new experiences and workflows to all aspects of our lives,” said Darian Shirazi, general partner at Gradient Ventures. “We’re excited to partner with Graham and the team at Jitty as they use LLMs and computer vision to completely reinvent the home buying experience.”