AI Startup Sela Raises $21M in Total Funding

The company will use the funding to grow its product, engineering, and go-to-market teams and continue developing AI agents that help borrowers through the consumer finance journey.

What is Sela?

Sela builds voice AI agents for consumer lending, with an initial focus on mortgage sales.

Its AI agents can answer complex borrower questions, build rapport, provide guidance, and bring in a loan officer when human support is needed. The company develops and continuously improves its agents for each lender.

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Sela measures its agents based on business outcomes such as the number of borrowers reached, productive conversations, and loans closed rather than the amount of time the AI is used.

How Much Funding Has Sela Raised?

Sela has raised $21 million in total funding across Seed and Series A financing rounds.

The latest funding was led by Costanoa, with participation from Emergence Capital. The source does not provide separate amounts or dates for the Seed and Series A rounds.

Who Invested in Sela’s Funding Round?

Costanoa led Sela’s funding across its Seed and Series A financing.

Emergence Capital also participated in the funding.

Why the Funding Matters

Sela will use the new capital to expand its product, engineering, and go-to-market teams.

The company will also continue developing its AI agents for consumer lending and improving how they guide borrowers through the mortgage process.

Who founded Sela?

Sela was founded in 2024 by Nate Becker and Vahe Tshitoyan.

The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Leadership Comments

"At my last company, I watched the strongest salespeople outperform the average by three or four times, and how hard it was to coach an entire team to that level," said Nate Becker, Co-Founder and CEO of Sela. "Sela's agents take the best performing sales behaviors, learned across tens of millions of calls, and employ them consistently across every customer interaction.

"Every lender's P&L comes down to the same two numbers: conversion and cost per funded loan, and both are under more pressure right now than at any point in a decade," said David Cheng, Partner at Costanoa. "What convinced us to lead was that Nate and Vahe fundamentally sell the ability to do more funded loans.

Market and Business Growth

Sela's AI agents have held millions of conversations with consumers and are designed to help borrowers navigate complex lending decisions.

In one A/B test involving more than 10,000 prospective borrowers, Sela reported a 9% increase in lead-to-lock rates compared with the lender's existing process. The company said this resulted in more than 40% higher profit for the lender.

In another A/B test with a top-five mortgage servicer, Sela's voice AI outperformed another voice AI solution by 41% on a lead-to-lock basis across more than 7,000 leads.

Large lenders typically test Sela's agents against their existing systems before wider deployment.

What Happens Next?

Sela plans to expand its team across product, engineering, and go-to-market functions.

The company will also continue developing and improving its AI agents to help borrowers through the consumer finance journey and connect them with loan officers when needed.

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