Palomma Secures $10 Million Series A to Modernize Colombia’s Rental Market

Palomma, a Colombian startup that blends artificial-intelligence leasing software with a payments platform, announced a $10 million Series A round led by Mexican venture firm Cometa. The financing lifts the company’s total capital to $14 million, including a previously undisclosed $4 million tranche, and brings new investors such as Volpe Capital, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Tekton Ventures, Simma Capital and Yango Ventures alongside existing backers Y Combinator, 17Sigma, Nido Ventures and Norte Ventures.

Founded by former Nubank employee Cipriano Echavarría and MIT-trained engineers Felipe Monsalve and Nicolás Gómez del Campo, Palomma entered Y Combinator in January 2023 with an initial vision of an account-to-account payments processor for Spanish-speaking Latin America. After a year of flat growth, the team pivoted toward property managers, offering AI-powered leasing tools and a rent-collection system. That shift unlocked rapid expansion: the firm now processes roughly $130 million in monthly rental payments, serves more than 200 000 tenants through over 500 property managers, and reports annual recurring revenue of about $3 million, a thirtyfold increase in 18 months. The company estimates the rent payment volume it handles annually at $1.5 billion.

Palomma’s revenue model combines a subscription fee for its AI leasing suite with a percentage of rent collected through its payments infrastructure. The platform also sells financial products built on the data it gathers. Tenants can enroll in Palomma Plus for rewards and credit-building benefits, while landlords may use Palomma Advance to receive up to a year’s rent in advance, or Palomma Protect for income insurance if a tenant defaults. A forthcoming Palomma Flex product aims to let renters split their monthly rent into two installments. The company says net revenue retention after 12 months sits at 390 percent, indicating that existing customers are generating nearly four times the initial revenue.

AI is central to Palomma’s operations. Leasing agents interact with prospects via WhatsApp, upload documents and receive approval decisions in under 30 seconds, drawing on payment histories and conversation data. The same technology underwrites rental guarantees, though the startup is still negotiating an insurer partnership to share that risk. By November 4, Palomma’s headcount grew to 18 employees, up from 14 at the close of the Series A, with a single human customer-service representative supported by AI agents handling the platform’s tenant base.

The fresh capital will fund deeper penetration in Colombia, further development of AI and financial products, and preparation for entry into other markets. While the founders are eyeing Mexico, Brazil and the Spanish-speaking United States, Echavarría stresses that “we want to win Colombia” before expanding abroad. Long-term ambitions include moving beyond rentals into homeowners-association fees and residential property transactions.

Cometa’s managing partner Pepe Bolaños highlighted the opportunity to digitize a fragmented market that houses nearly eight million renting households in Colombia. He noted that Palomma’s data-rich approach, powered by AI, creates a proprietary asset that can be monetized at scale, an attractive proposition for investors seeking to modernize Latin America’s real-estate finance ecosystem. The next milestone for Palomma will be proving its model in new geographies while maintaining the rapid growth and high retention that have defined its first two years.