Eliminate the information gap in the rental housing market! The rental service bot has raised millions in financing, completed 400 transactions in 90 days, and is committed to shortening the house-hunting cycle from 46 days to "11 seconds".
AI breaks the monopoly of rental housing information, and Rental Bot launches financing to accelerate growth
In the 90-day 0-1 cold start, it obtained 400 real orders, with a payment rate of 17.37%, cumulative revenue exceeding 10,000 yuan, and has been profitable for several consecutive months.
The rental market does not lack housing sources, what is lacking is information transparency and matching efficiency
China's residential rental market has long faced a seemingly contradictory dilemma: the total supply is sufficient, but transaction efficiency remains consistently low. Public data shows that the number of people renting houses across the country has exceeded 260 million, with a market size of about 2.5 trillion yuan. However, under the supply structure dominated by scattered rentals by individual owners, the institutionalization rate of housing is only about 10%, far lower than that of mature markets such as Japan, the United States and Germany.
The authenticity of housing sources and matching efficiency have long constituted two-sided pain points: tenants need to repeatedly screen out expired and false information, while owners bear the cost of long-term vacancy of housing sources. According to data from the 58 Anjuke Research Institute, the average listing period of rental housing in 40 major cities across the country was 46.8 days in January 2026. The proliferation of false housing sources, low matching efficiency and high information barriers, the traditional model profits from information asymmetry, and its inherent motivation is to extend the house-hunting cycle. The vicious circle of high cost for tenants to find houses and difficulty for owners to rent out their properties has long been difficult to solve.
With first-hand insights into the industry's pain points, 【Rental Bot】, a real housing source transaction service platform focusing on AI intelligent matching and credit guarantee, has entered the public view, hoping to use technology to eliminate information asymmetry and return the rental business to the essence of service and result delivery.
Recently, Rental Bot announced the launch of 1 million yuan in early-stage financing, with a post-money valuation of 15 million yuan. The funds are planned to be used for product R&D, market promotion, offline operation and risk reserve.
Efficient house-hunting through geographical location + AI semantic analysis, 1000 self-built channels + tens of thousands of exclusive data to ensure the supply of real housing sources
The product capabilities of Rental Bot are built on "housing source channels + AI matching + human-machine collaborative services".
On the housing supply side, the platform currently covers 10 core first-tier and second-tier cities across China including Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, and has accumulated more than 1 million pieces of real housing source information.
Real housing sources are the foundation for Rental Bot to build user trust, and also an important capability that distinguishes the platform from the traditional information matching model.
Through channel management, housing source update and risk control mechanisms, the platform enables tenants to see not just the number of housing sources, but a trustworthy and directly contactable supply of effective housing sources.
Rental Bot has expanded more than 1,000 self-built housing source acquisition channels, completed in-depth data filing for 23,000 residential communities, directly connected to first-hand housing sources from landlords and apartments, without any crawling from the public network.
A C-end user can only list 1 housing source at the same time with one account, to prevent unlicensed agencies from publishing a large number of false drainage housing sources in batches; institutions or landlords with multiple housing sources can obtain the permission to publish housing sources in batches for free after passing the platform's qualification review.
To improve the effectiveness of housing sources, Rental Bot currently mainly displays housing sources listed in the past 7 days, and housing sources that exceed the validity period will be automatically removed from the shelves.
In the matching process, Rental Bot uses AI semantic analysis capabilities to process users' unstructured needs. Tenants do not need to fill in items by item according to fixed labels, but only need to describe natural language needs such as "near the subway, hope there is a gym nearby, and share the apartment with no more than 3 other people", the system can identify the rental needs and perform screening and matching in the housing source database.
In only about 11 seconds, Rental Bot can complete the screening of housing sources according to the tenant's needs, and recommend up to 10 matching housing sources. Compared with the average 20-30 minutes spent by traditional agencies to find houses manually, the house-hunting efficiency is improved by about 180 times. After completing the pre-screening through AI, the platform can reduce the time tenants spend on invalid housing sources, and also help house-hunting specialists focus more on communication, house viewing arrangement and transaction closing services.
In addition to the free AI house-hunting section, Rental Bot also launches paid house-hunting services for high-end, complex and time-sensitive rental needs. AI is responsible for demand understanding, initial screening of housing sources and candidate recommendation, while house-hunting specialists are responsible for housing source communication, house viewing coordination and process follow-up, forming a service model of "AI efficiency improvement + manual delivery". Users with standardized needs can use free tools; for users who need customized services, the platform provides a more complete house-hunting solution.
In terms of transaction services, Rental Bot plans to further improve its capabilities in credit evaluation, capital supervision and performance guarantee, and promote rental services to extend from "finding a house" to "successfully completing the transaction". The Regulations on Housing Rental announced in 2025 clearly requires housing rental enterprises to publish true, accurate and complete housing source information, and puts forward requirements for housing source verification, rental archives and information management. [2] Rental Bot will continue to improve the housing source management, service process and user rights protection mechanism around industry norms.
The early business model has been verified, 0-1 cold start for 90 days, and nearly 400 orders have been obtained
Rental Bot has completed the early verification from housing source channel construction, AI matching model training to paid service launch, and built a private domain traffic and service closed loop within the WeChat ecosystem. The platform accepts user demands through free tools, realizes revenue conversion through paid house-hunting services, and at the same time provides housing source cooperation and transaction matching services for apartments, landlords and other housing source institutions, gradually forming a diversified revenue structure of "free tools + paid services + B-end cooperation + transaction closing services".
According to the phased data of Rental Bot from June to August 2026, the cumulative active users of the platform increased by 164% compared with that in June, and the payment conversion rate reached a maximum of 17.37%; the revenue in August increased by 2.95 times compared with that in June, the revenue ROI reached 2.34, the average customer unit price was 50.27 yuan, the maximum customer unit price was close to 2000 yuan, and the cumulative number of orders was nearly 400. The project has been profitable for two consecutive months, and the core business model has completed the early closed-loop verification.
In terms of customer acquisition cost, the current customer acquisition cost of Rental Bot is only in single digits, which is about 1.6% of the industry average. Users enter the platform with clear regions, budgets and living conditions, and the platform can complete matching and service delivery around real demands.
In terms of cooperative resources, Rental Bot has reached business cooperation with Beike, and completed the in-depth integration of the direct rental channels of apartments in the whole area of Beijing. At the same time, it has been reported by industry media and official media such as China Real Estate Association, The Beijing News and Ifeng.com. By establishing connections with apartments, housing source institutions and industry partners, Rental Bot will continue to expand the supply of real housing sources and improve the housing source density and service coverage capabilities in key cities.
From Internet giants to front-line rental agents, a team led by compound practical entrepreneurs
Founder Zhang San has a bachelor's degree in advertising from the School of Journalism, Renmin University of China, holds a PMP project management qualification certification, and has previously worked at Kuaishou, Hangzhou Xuhang and NetEase. He has 6 years of experience in marketing and user growth in large Internet companies, with a total of more than 35 million yuan in marketing funds under his management, and has created multiple million-level communication cases on social media.
After entering the rental industry in June 2025, Zhang San went deep into the market as a front-line rental agent, built the project from the perspective of housing source expansion and user demands, and promoted Rental Bot to complete the 0-to-1 product verification.
The financing amount of this round is 1 million yuan, with a post-money valuation of 15 million yuan. Rental Bot plans to use 30% of the funds for product R&D and technology iteration, 50% for market promotion and user growth, 10% for supply chain and offline operation, and 10% as risk reserve. In the next 6 to 12 months, the platform plans to achieve more than 125,000 cumulative active users, more than 8,000 orders, and more than 4.8 million yuan in cumulative revenue, and continue to consolidate the user and housing source density in 10 core cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.
With the growth of user scale, Rental Bot will further improve its AI matching model, credit rating system and transaction guarantee capabilities, expand cooperation with B-end housing source institutions, improve the performance capability of high-end house-hunting business, and promote the platform to gradually evolve from an efficiency tool to a rental ecosystem covering housing sources, matching, services and transactions.
Zhang San, founder of Rental Bot, said that the information asymmetry in the traditional rental industry is a long-standing structural problem. Tenants need more transparent housing source information, and landlords need more efficient rental services. Rental Bot hopes to use the housing source channels and AI matching capabilities accumulated on the front line to make house-hunting faster, prices more transparent, and transactions more efficient, returning to the value delivery of rental services themselves.
References
[1]: https://www.news.cn/house/20250728/2a67acc7f22548ca9a3a19ab4fed17b2/c.html "What changes have taken place in the long-term rental market pattern"
[2]: https://www.mee.gov.cn/zcwj/gwywj/202507/t20250722_1123995.shtml "Regulations on Housing Rental, Order No. 812 of the State Council of the People's Republic of China "