Dono Raises $6.5M to Revolutionize U.S. Property Records
Dono, an AI-powered property records platform that transforms fragmented county records into actionable ownership data, has announced the successful closing of a $6.5 million seed funding round, bringing its total funding to $10.2 million. The round was led by Link Ventures, with participation from lool VC and Alumni Ventures.
The funding will be used to accelerate Dono’s expansion across U.S. counties and enhance its platform, which aims to modernize one of the world’s largest but most outdated asset record systems.
The Challenge of U.S. Property Records
Real estate in the United States is the world’s largest asset class, valued at over $50 trillion, yet it is still built on a system that has remained largely unchanged for centuries. Unlike financial markets, where billions of dollars in U.S. Treasury bonds can trade in fractions of a second, property transactions rely on a fragmented county-level system that often depends on paper records and outdated manual processes.
Across the U.S., property ownership is recorded in more than 3,700 counties, representing over 300 years of accumulated records. Verifying ownership is slow, expensive, and often opaque. According to industry data, roughly 14% of real estate closings experience delays, typically ranging from three to seven days, mostly due to title-related issues. This inefficiency prevents real-time or near-real-time property closings from being scalable.
Currently, Dono covers over 700 counties in the U.S. and is building modular infrastructure to make property records clear, accessible, and instantly usable at a fraction of the cost of current methods. Its solutions are available both via a user interface (UI) and application programming interface (API), allowing seamless integration into existing workflows.
From Title Insurance to Broader Real Estate Markets
Dono initially focused on title insurance, partnering with title underwriters and national title agencies. In this sector, operational inefficiencies and manual processes create immediate pain points, and the cost of human labor is unavoidable. However, the traditional workforce is under pressure, with more than 50% expected to retire by 2030, creating a critical gap in operational capacity.
The platform’s success in title insurance has led to increasing demand from adjacent markets, including lenders, mortgage servicers, and real estate investment firms. By providing clarity and speed in property records, Dono is enabling organizations in these sectors to operate more efficiently and scale without proportionally increasing staff.
Modern Infrastructure for Real Estate
“The gap isn’t just technology. Plenty of tools exist, but they aren’t built on modern infrastructure,” said Tali Gross, CEO of Dono. “Our mission is to fundamentally improve the home closing experience by giving everyone involved—title professionals, lenders, buyers, servicers—the certainty they need without the friction that’s been accepted as ‘just how it works’ for decades.”
Traditional property records systems rely heavily on manual processes, offshore vendors, and legacy title plants, resulting in unpredictable fees, multi-day turnaround times, and inconsistent quality. As organizations expand into new markets, these traditional solutions break down, requiring a proportional increase in headcount to maintain performance.
Dono addresses this challenge by building the infrastructure layer underneath ownership verification, removing the dependency on manual staffing and enabling scalability.
Key Capabilities of the Dono Platform
Dono’s platform includes four modular capabilities, which can work independently or together:
- Data Collection: Aggregates property data from county records, title plants, and customer-provided sources, ensuring coverage and reliability.
- AI-Powered Extraction and Indexing: Uses advanced AI to extract critical information from complex documents and index it efficiently.
- Underwriting Intelligence: Encodes title expertise into AI that is adaptable to specific standards, enabling faster, more accurate decision-making.
- Configurable Data Delivery: Offers flexible output formats via UI or API, tailored to each customer’s workflow.
Even with AI automation, expert human verification ensures accuracy, a non-negotiable requirement in the property records industry. According to Dono, the platform can reduce turnaround time by 80% and allow teams to triple capacity without increasing headcount.
“Organizations face an impossible tradeoff: accuracy, speed, or cost…pick one, maybe two,” added Gross. “We eliminate that choice.”
Strategic Use of Seed Funding
The $6.5 million seed round will be used to accelerate geographic expansion, building a county-level infrastructure market by market. Dono aims to cover nearly 50% of U.S. states by population by the end of the year.
Funding will also support deepening the platform’s technology, increasing automation and efficiency without compromising accuracy. Beyond title insurance, Dono plans to expand support for lenders, mortgage servicers, and real estate investment firms, meeting growing demand for reliable, scalable property data.
Transforming the Real Estate Industry
Dono’s platform addresses a systemic inefficiency in the U.S. real estate market by providing a modern, AI-driven solution to a centuries-old problem. By combining technology, automation, and expert verification, the company is poised to streamline property closings, reduce operational costs, and accelerate transaction times across multiple sectors.
With the backing of experienced investors, Dono is set to reshape how property records are accessed and used, offering a level of transparency and efficiency previously unavailable in the market.
SOURCE LINK:https://www.businesswire.com/
