Uniti AI's Francesco Decamilli on Building AI Leasing Agents for Commercial Real Estate

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Date:

27 Mar 2025

“The future operating model for real estate isn’t just human-driven or AI-driven—it’s both,” says Francesco Decamilli, Co-Founder and CEO of Uniti AI, which just secured $4 million in seed funding to expand its AI agent platform for commercial real estate operators.

In commercial real estate, where response time can make or break a deal, Uniti AI is applying artificial intelligence to enhance how properties are leased and managed. The market is responding—the company has scaled from zero to nearly seven figures in annual recurring revenue in just its first year.

From Media to PropTech: A Journey of Innovation

Decamilli’s path to founding Uniti AI wasn’t a direct one. His journey into PropTech began at Bisnow Media, where he spent six years in various roles, eventually becoming Chief Operating Officer before the company’s sale to private equity.

“In many respects, my journey into PropTech started the day I graduated college,” Decamilli explains. “Through that role, I gained extensive exposure to every real estate asset class in every market in the country.” This experience, he says, gave him “the confidence that I wanted to run my own business one day as a founder.”

After leaving Bisnow, Decamilli joined Knotel in 2019, seeking experience in “hyper-growth, scaling, highly well-funded companies.” As he explains, “I became interested in technology. Many of my friends were working at Series A and Series B startups, and I had this itch to scratch.” While at Knotel, he gained exposure to co-working and flex office spaces—knowledge that would prove valuable later.

Following stints at Colliers in corporate innovation and at Valve, a PropTech startup building “a CoStar-like product for the co-working industry,” Decamilli found himself ready to build his own business. All he needed was the right idea.

The AI Opportunity in Commercial Real Estate

That idea came in 2023, when generative AI technologies became broadly accessible. Decamilli recognized an opportunity: “It became hyper-evident to me that AI was going to have a meaningful impact on commercial real estate. Real estate was not immune, and I actually thought real estate was well positioned to take advantage of it because it’s a very people-dominated industry.”

Leasing—repetitive, process-driven, and critical to revenue—seemed like the natural place to apply AI. In late 2023, Decamilli founded Uniti AI with a clear vision: to create a platform that any real estate company could use to build an AI leasing agent to help them more effectively engage leads, qualify them, and convert them to customers.

“Leasing is a very repetitive workflow. It is a fairly similar workflow across all real estate businesses,” Decamilli notes. “At its core, you’re trying to hook somebody who is interested in your property, convince them that it’s the right property for them, bring them in for a tour, and close the sale.”

Building a Flexible AI Platform

What makes Uniti AI unique is its flexibility. The platform is built on OpenAI’s large language models (LLMs), which can adapt to different data schemas tied to different property management platforms or asset classes.

“Our flexibility stems from being an LLM-native agent,” explains Decamilli. “Our AI agents are just like employees. When you hire an employee, you give them an email address… Our AI agents get an email address and a phone number for texting capability.”

This approach allows Uniti AI to integrate with virtually any tech stack. “What software doesn’t integrate with Google? What software doesn’t integrate with Outlook?” Decamilli asks rhetorically. “When you’re hiring a human, you’re not asking, ‘Does this Steve integrate with Salesforce?'”

The company initially focused on co-working spaces, where Decamilli had industry connections. After validating the concept with “one of the top five largest operators in the world, who basically said, ‘If you build it, I will buy it,'” Uniti AI went live with its first customers in early 2024.

By mid-2024, the company had expanded beyond co-working to serve clients in self-storage, residential, events, and brokerage. Now, with $4 million in seed funding led by Prudence and participation from Alate Partners, Flex Capital, Observer Capital, and RE Angels, Uniti AI is poised for significant growth.

Real Results and Real ROI

While some AI solutions are struggling to prove their worth beyond the initial hype, Uniti AI is delivering tangible results. “Experimental AI budgets will dry up, and you need to have a solution that delivers tangible ROI,” Decamilli acknowledges.

The results speak for themselves. Jason Fein, Partner at ABS Partners Real Estate, LLC, reports: “In real estate, a quick response with accurate details is critical. Uniti AI ensures every lead is engaged immediately, allowing our team to focus on closing deals instead of chasing inquiries. Lili, our AI leasing agent, has become an indispensable part of our leasing strategy.”

According to the company, clients across 10+ countries in the US, Europe, and Asia are seeing doubled lead-to-customer conversion rates through instant, persistent, and conversational engagement.

The Future of AI in Real Estate Operations

What started as a leasing solution is expanding into other operational areas. Decamilli notes that clients are already asking for additional capabilities: “Can the AI agent reach out and notify an overdue tenant and collect payment information? Can we have an AI agent that residents can text to answer the common questions they ask repeatedly?”

The company’s roadmap includes three main pathways: more agents (including collections and customer support), deeper integrations with property management systems like Yardi, MRI, and Storable, and additional communication channels, particularly voice capabilities.

“This year is significant for us in terms of delivering voice and growing our market presence in self-storage,” says Decamilli.

As Gavin Myers, Founder and Managing Partner of Prudence, puts it: “We are in the early innings of enterprise agentic adoption. Uniti AI has already proven the immense appetite to automate previously manual workflows across major real estate companies.”

For commercial real estate operators looking to stay competitive in a technology-driven market, AI agents aren’t just a futuristic concept—they’re increasingly becoming an operational necessity. Uniti AI is positioning itself as the platform of choice for this advancement in real estate operations.

“AI is ultimately a means to an end,” Decamilli concludes. “We’re building a better way to engage and close leads—something people have always done. If you can create a more efficient process using the newest technology, you win.”