Palomma Secures $14M to Revolutionize Latin American Real Estate with AI-Driven Fintech

Colombian fintech Palomma has secured $14 million in funding to scale its AI-driven rental payment and financial services platform across Latin America. By leveraging proprietary payment data to offer credit and guarantees, the company addresses a significant gap in regional real estate markets where traditional banking often fails to serve tenants and landlords effectively.

What was announced

Palomma's $14 million funding round was led by Cometa, with participation from Y Combinator. The capital is intended to support further product development and potential international expansion, with the company currently considering entries into Mexico, Brazil, and the U.S. Hispanic market. The platform functions as a comprehensive financial layer for the real estate sector, integrating AI agents, rental payment infrastructure, credit products, and rental guarantees.

The company currently processes $130 million in monthly rental payments, serving a network of over 500 real estate companies in Colombia. This infrastructure supports more than 200,000 tenants. Palomma has demonstrated rapid commercial scaling, reporting a 30-fold increase in revenue over the last 18 months. This growth has brought the firm to an annual recurring revenue of approximately $3 million.

A key metric highlighted in the announcement is the company’s 390% net revenue retention rate. This indicates that revenue from existing customer cohorts nearly quadruples within a year, suggesting high stickiness and successful upselling of financial products to its established user base of landlords and real estate firms. By positioning itself as the "Nubank of real estate," Palomma aims to use its proprietary data to underwrite risk in a segment traditionally overlooked by legacy financial institutions.

The companies involved

Palomma is a Colombian-based fintech startup that graduated from the Y Combinator accelerator program. The firm focuses on digitizing the fragmented rental market in Latin America, moving beyond simple payment processing to provide a full suite of financial tools for the property ecosystem. By utilizing AI and proprietary data, it seeks to bridge the gap between property management and financial services in a region where such integration is historically low.

The funding round was led by Cometa, a venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage technology companies in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Cometa typically backs founders building scalable platforms in sectors like fintech, marketplaces, and enterprise software, aiming to foster innovation within the regional ecosystem.

Y Combinator, the startup accelerator based in California, provides seed funding and mentorship to early-stage companies. It has a significant track record in the fintech space, having previously backed major regional players. The involvement of both Cometa and Y Combinator underscores the investor interest in specialized fintech solutions that target specific vertical markets, such as real estate, rather than general consumer banking.

What this means

This move signals a shift in the Latin American fintech landscape from general digital banking toward "vertical fintech"—platforms that embed financial services into specific industries. Real estate is a prime target because of its high transaction volumes and the historical lack of reliable credit data for tenants. By controlling the payment flow, Palomma gains a data advantage that traditional banks cannot easily replicate. The high net revenue retention suggests that once a real estate firm integrates these tools, the platform becomes indispensable. The broader industry question is whether this model can remain capital-efficient as it expands into the more competitive and regulated markets of Brazil and Mexico.