MMainstay Labs provides a student engagement platform that uses AI-powered chatbots to guide students through college admissions, financial aid, and academic life via text and web chat. Unlike standard automated tools, this platform uses behavioral intelligence to provide empathetic support at scale, helping universities improve student retention and success. Additionally, the company operates a real estate division that offers a market intelligence platform for the single-family rental industry to manage property transactions and data. The company's goal is to provide stable, data-driven support systems that help individuals navigate complex life transitions in both education and housing.
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Industries
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Growth Equity (Venture Capital)
Total Funding
$43M
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2020
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Total Funding
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Former Zillow executive Carey Armstrong has sold her AI-powered startup Truelist to Mainstay, a residential real estate technology and brokerage platform, just over a year after launching. Armstrong will join Mainstay as chief strategy officer. Mainstay announced the acquisition as part of its expansion beyond institutional residential investors into the broader brokerage and agent market. The company also raised more than $18 million in growth capital from new and existing investors. The deal emerged from conversations between the companies after they met at the Blueprint conference roughly a year ago. Both had been developing similar listing and transaction infrastructure for different segments of the housing market. Armstrong is part of a network of former Zillow executives known as the "Zillow mafia", many of whom remain active in real estate proptech. The combined company now has about 100 employees.
Rechat adds private user community; Mainstay acquires Truelist. This post was originally published on this site. "House of Rechat" is adding 175 new members each week. Plus, Mainstay absorbs Truelist; ClearCapital launches risk navigator tool; AngelAI to expand; more.
Mainstay, a San Francisco-based provider of an intelligent system of record for residential real estate, has raised over $18 million in funding. Backers included Parker89, Stackpoint, Alpaca VC, FJ Labs, Khosla Ventures, Era Ventures, and Clocktower Technology Ventures. The company will use the funds to expand operations and development efforts. Led by chief executive officer Dod Fraser, Mainstay provides an agentic platform connecting data, decisions, and execution across the residential asset lifecycle. The solution combines proprietary and external data sources into a single record for every property, using agentic automation to handle workflows across transaction execution, property taxes, HOA management, and payments.
Mainstay raises $18M and acquires Truelist to expand AI infrastructure across residential real estate. Truelist acquisition and capital raise accelerate Mainstay's expansion beyond the largest residential investors to brokerages, agents, and the broader residential real estate market. September 16, 2026 10:31 ET | Source: Mainstay SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 16, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Mainstay, the intelligent system of record for residential real estate, today announced it raised more than $18 million in growth capital and acquired Truelist, an AI-powered listing platform for brokers and agents. "Joining forces means we stop duplicating effort and start compounding it. I have enormous respect for what Dod and the team have built, and I'm excited about..." "Residential real estate is still run across an enormous number of disconnected systems, datasets, and manual workflows," "We have spent years building the technology to seamlessly connect data, decisions, and execution for the largest residential investors. This capital and the..." "Mainstay and Truelist are both unusual in that their teams have actually built and operated these systems at scale inside the industry's largest and most..." The financing includes new investors Parker89, Stackpoint, Alpaca VC, and FJ Labs, alongside existing investors Khosla Ventures, Era Ventures, and Clocktower Technology Ventures. Mainstay will use the capital to accelerate its expansion into brokerage and smaller investor customers, bringing the data, pricing, and automation powering the industry's largest residential companies to customers of any size. Mainstay is an intelligent system of record connecting data, decisions, and execution across the residential asset lifecycle. It combines each customer's data with Mainstay's proprietary data and thousands of external sources into a single, continuously updated record for every property. Mainstay's agentic platform turns those decisions into outcomes across workflows including transaction execution, property taxes, HOA, payments, and many others. Every action executed generates proprietary outcome data that improves the next decision. This autonomous approach allows the same platform to effectively serve multiple players within the residential real estate ecosystem, including an owner of ten homes and an institution with tens of thousands of homes managed. The addition of Truelist's capabilities extends that platform to brokerages and agents. Mainstay has facilitated more than $12 billion in real estate transactions and executed over 2 million agentic workflows across more than 50,000 external portals. It serves 95% of the 60 largest residential real estate investors. "Residential real estate is still run across an enormous number of disconnected systems, datasets, and manual workflows," said Dod Fraser, CEO and Co-Founder of Mainstay. "We have spent years building the technology to seamlessly connect data, decisions, and execution for the largest residential investors. This capital and the acquisition of Truelist allow us to bring that same infrastructure to a much broader market of brokerages, agents, and investors." Mainstay was carved out of Opendoor as an independent company in August 2024 after its founding team spent over a decade building and operating residential real estate technology and infrastructure at scale. Fraser, the former President of Opendoor, leads the company alongside President J.D. Rasmussen and COO Michael Dulfer, both longtime Opendoor executives. Truelist founder and CEO Carey Armstrong is joining Mainstay as Chief Strategy Officer. Armstrong previously served as Vice President of Premier Agent at Zillow and co-founded and served as COO of Tomo. "Mainstay and Truelist are both unusual in that their teams have actually built and operated these systems at scale inside the industry's largest and most innovative residential platforms," said Clelia Peters, Managing Partner of Era Ventures and a Mainstay board member. "The combination of deep residential real estate experience, a well of proprietary data, and an innovation and AI first approach is unique in the industry, and creates an opportunity to build something foundational." Truelist helps brokers and agents create, manage, and distribute listings faster, more consistently, and with more control. Combined with Mainstay's data, pricing intelligence, and automation infrastructure, Truelist adds a critical listing data and workflow layer to Mainstay's broader residential real estate platform, improving data quality, reducing manual work across fragmented MLS systems, and bringing AI-powered pricing and execution capabilities to brokerages and agents at any scale. "Mainstay and Truelist have been attacking the same broken system from different angles - Mainstay on behalf of investors, Truelist on behalf of brokers and agents," said Carey Armstrong, incoming Chief Strategy Officer at Mainstay and Founder/CEO of Truelist. "Joining forces means we stop duplicating effort and start compounding it. I have enormous respect for what Dod and the team have built, and I'm excited about what we can do together." About Mainstay Mainstay is the intelligent system of record for residential real estate, connecting data, decisions, and execution across the home lifecycle. Trusted by the largest residential operators, Mainstay combines proprietary data, pricing intelligence, and agentic automation to replace fragmented systems and manual workflows across buying, owning, and selling homes. Mainstay has facilitated more than $12 billion in residential real estate transactions and executed more than 2 million agentic workflows. Learn more at mainstay.io. Contact data. Release summary mainstay raises $18M and acquires Truelist to expand AI infrastructure across residential real estate.
Mainstay acquires Truelist, raises $18M in financing by HousingWire Automation September 16, 2026 09:56 AM Mainstay became an independent company after being carved out of Opendoor in 2024
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Industries
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Growth Equity (Venture Capital)
Total Funding
$43M
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2020
Find jobs on Simplify and start your career today