AI assistant Shilo closes $2.6 million seed funding round

Shilo.ai is going to have an easier time with product development thanks to a $2.6 million seed funding round. The AI assistant firm announced the funding round on Monday. 

The round was led by AZ-VC, Arizona’s largest venture capital fund, which was founded by Jack Selby, the managing director of Thiel Capital.

“We’re not here to build another tool,” Justin Benson, the co-founder and CEO of Shilo, said in a statement. “We’re here to build the AI teammate every elite agent will use daily — one that listens, learns, and helps them win. That teammate’s name is Shilo.”

According to the company, Shilo can deeply understand the context of business calls made by real estate agents and mortgage loan officers. This enables the AI assistant to complete follow-up tasks and deliver a high-touch experience for clients without hiring additional employees.

The company said the funding round will  accelerate Shilo’s product development and go-to-market expansion.

“AI is having a breakthrough moment, but real impact comes when you embed that intelligence into the day-to-day of real work,” Ashok Santhanam, the managing director of AZ-VC, said in a statement. “Shilo is the first AI product we’ve seen that’s truly built for the unique demands of real estate. This team has a rare combination of product clarity, execution speed, and deep customer empathy.”

As of early May, Shilo is one of the few application programming interface (API) partners left with access to call recordings and the contents of text messages through the Zillow-owned CRM Follow Up Boss. 

Follow up Boss told partners in an email that the API update “aligns call recording and text message content with other data access protections already in place, such as email content (which has never been available via API), in order to protect sensitive data.”