Marc, a startup that uses AI to check apartment owners’ bills against their vendor contracts, has raised $5 million in seed funding to expand across the U.S. and Canada.
As apartment owners buy more properties, it becomes harder to check whether vendors are charging the agreed prices. Contracts may be spread across multiple inboxes, shared drives and other systems, which can make it more difficult – and time-consuming – for employees to track them down to check a bill.
New York-based Marc uses AI to read those contracts and compare the prices and terms with incoming bills through connections to owners’ accounting and payment systems. It also helps owners track when contracts are up for renewal, compare costs and see where they could use the same vendor for multiple properties.
Marc currently works exclusively with multifamily owners and operators. Its software manages more than $100 million in annual vendor spending across 30 U.S. states and Canada, and its customers collectively oversee $90 billion in assets, according to founder and CEO Aaron Devitt. Those customers include Magnolia Capital and Birge & Held.
Devitt, 24, told This Week in Fintech that Marc became profitable within its first few months in the U.S. market this year and initially had no plans to raise more money. But conversations with investors eventually led to the seed round, and he said it took only about two weeks from starting the fundraising process to signing a term sheet, he said.
“We had already built a profitable business, but the scale of the opportunity we were seeing in North America made this the right time to accelerate,” Devitt said.
The round brings Marc’s total funding to $6 million. Work-Bench and MXV Capital led the seed round, which included participation from Intercom co-founder Des Traynor, Braze co-founder Mark Ghermazian, Brightflag co-founder Ian Nolan and ButterflyMX co-founder Cyrus Claffey.
Marc Founder and CEO Aaron Devitt; Image credit: Marc
Finding billing errors across thousands of apartments
Three of the 10 largest U.S. property managers also use Marc, according to the company, though Devitt emphasized that they access it through ownership groups that are customers, rather than being direct customers themselves.
Billing mistakes can add up quite significantly for owners with thousands of apartments. Catching them means finding the right contract and checking each charge against what the vendor agreed to.
Marc says it did that for Birge & Held, which oversees more than $4 billion in assets across 25,000 apartments. The startup’s software reviewed more than 50,000 invoice records from one technology vendor and uncovered more than 100 charges that exceeded what the contract allowed, according to Devitt. That work, he said, would otherwise take “thousands of hours.”
From Dublin to New York
Devitt started Marc while studying marketing in Dublin. Its first product was software for the UK and Irish rental markets, which grew to more than 40,000 monthly logins, the company said. He raised $1 million in pre-seed funding in late 2024 and left college around then.
Over time, Devitt saw a chance to work with owners managing far more properties in the U.S. and Canada. To take advantage of what he believed was a massive opportunity, Marc launched its U.S. product early this year and sold its original UK and Ireland product as it shifted focus.
Building a clearer picture of property costs
Jonathan Lehr, co-founder and general partner at Work-Bench, told This Week in Fintech that he believes that Marc could eventually use the contracts and invoices it processes to build an anonymized database of property operating costs, with customers choosing whether to contribute their data. By considering factors – including location, property type and the services covered by each contract – the company could help owners compare expenses across markets and make more informed decisions about vendors and acquisitions, he said.
“Imagine evaluating an acquisition in a new market and knowing, before closing, whether a property's operating expenses are above or below market. Or identifying opportunities to consolidate landscaping contracts across 20 properties at materially better pricing,” Lehr wrote. “As more customers choose to participate, MARC's anonymized spend intelligence has the potential to become increasingly valuable, with every new market adding another dimension to its insights.”
Marc has eight employees and operations in Dublin. It plans to use the funding to hire across product, engineering and sales, with Devitt building out the team from its new office in New York’s Flatiron neighborhood.
