Sela's AI Agents Help Originate $1B+ in Loans per Month, Company Raises $21M
6 of the 10 largest independent mortgage banks use Sela while crossing $10 million annualized run-rate revenue in 18 months
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Sela, the market-leading voice AI system for mortgage sales, today announced a total of $21 million in funding across Seed and Series A, led by Costanoa, with participation from Emergence Capital. Today, Sela's AI agents help loan officers originate more than $1 billion in new mortgages per month, and the company has crossed $10 million annualized run-rate revenue in 18 months. Sela will use the funding to grow its team and continue to develop agents that guide borrowers through the entire consumer finance journey.
Sela's AI agents answer complex questions, build rapport, educate borrowers, and bring in a loan officer when necessary. Its agents are built to maximize conversion, benefiting from hundreds of optimizations and AB tests to create a system that consistently outperforms human teams and other AI solutions. Sela designs, runs, and continuously improves its agents for each lender, measuring success in borrowers reached, productive conversations held, and loans closed, not minutes used.
Large lenders typically A/B test Sela's agents against existing systems before rolling out widely. In one A/B test involving more than 10,000 prospective borrowers, Sela produced a 9% increase in lead-to-lock rates, yielding more than 40% higher profit for the lender than their existing process. In an A/B test with a top-five mortgage servicer, Sela outperformed another voice AI solution by 41% on a lead-to-lock basis, across 7,000+ leads.
"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. Automating the mortgage process with AI doesn't actually help anyone unless it improves the experience for consumers and makes the process more effective for lenders. We have built a system that does both of these things, and we've proven it works at scale. In the next 12 months, our AI agents will run more of the mortgage sales process, as we aim to make financial decisions less anxiety-inducing, more pleasant, cheaper, and easier for consumers."
"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. That's why six of the ten largest independent mortgage banks put Sela in production in under two years."
Sela was founded by Nate Becker, a former co-founder of VoiceOps and a data scientist at LinkedIn, and Vahe Tshitoyan, a former senior machine learning engineer and tech lead at Google. The company now has 17 full-time employees and plans to grow to 50 over the next year, hiring across product, engineering, and go-to-market roles.
About Sela
Sela builds AI agents for consumer lending. Its agents hold millions of real conversations with consumers, help them navigate complex decisions, and connect engaged borrowers to loan officers to complete the loan. Founded by Nate Becker and Vahe Tshitoyan and backed by Costanoa and Emergence Capital, Sela is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more at sela.io.
About Costanoa
Costanoa exists to elevate founders building companies of consequence. We lead investments from formation through Series A in Applied AI, AI Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, National Security, and Fintech. With $2.5B AUM, we're boutique by design—making fewer investments to deliver deeper expertise and operational support when it matters most: the early, defining stages of growth. We have been recognized as one of America's Top Venture Capital Firms by TIME and named to a top 4 Seed-Stage firm on Inc.'s Founder-Friendly Investors list. For more information, please visit www.costanoa.vc.
About Emergence Capital
Emergence Capital backs visionary founders transforming the way the world works. We partner from the earliest stages and stay committed as companies scale. Notable investments include Bill, Box, Doximity, Genspark, Gusto, Mercor, Physical Intelligence, Salesforce, Together AI, Veeva, and Zoom. More than 1 in 5 of our early-stage investments have exceeded a billion-dollar valuation. Learn more at emcap.com.
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Press Team, Sela
SOURCE Sela AI, Inc. / BAM Agency
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