Facilo, a Tokyo startup that makes software for real estate brokers, announced on September 17, 2026 that it had made Collabit, the company behind the AI property valuation service HowMa, a group company.
Facilo did not disclose the price, the size of its stake or other terms. It described the move as the first step in its M&A strategy.
The announcement came alongside a ¥6.4 billion (about $43 million) Series B round. Collabit, based in Minato, Tokyo and led by chief executive Tsuyoshi Asami, will work with Facilo to connect the two companies' products.
What Collabit built
Collabit's products are built around its own algorithm for estimating property prices with AI. Its best-known service is HowMa, an AI real estate valuation service, and it also offers AI Satei Pro, a tool that real estate agents use to produce valuation reports.
Valuation is one of the first steps when a homeowner considers selling. Agents typically prepare a price estimate to win the listing, and tools such as Collabit's are designed to make that estimate faster and easier to justify.
The companies did not disclose Collabit's revenue, headcount or funding history, or say whether Facilo now owns all of the company.
What Facilo does
Facilo, based in Chuo, Tokyo and led by chief executive Hiroshi Ichikawa, sells what it calls a real estate communication cloud. The service, launched in February 2023, brings the steps of a property transaction into a single cloud system so that agents and their clients can see where a deal stands. Its vision statement roughly translates as making moving home lighter and life more vivid.
As of September 2026 the service was used by 2,300 brokerage offices and more than 13,000 sales staff across Japan.
Why the two are combining
Facilo said the aim is to link its products with Collabit's so that the work of selling a property on behalf of a client can be done end to end on one shared platform. The companies argue that brokers suffer from what they call SaaS fatigue: switching between separate applications and re-entering data that does not flow between them.
Facilo also plans a new series of products built with AI from the start. Together with Collabit, it says it wants to build an AI co-creation ecosystem in which people and AI work together to improve the experience for home sellers and buyers.
The Series B
The ¥6.4 billion round is made up of ¥3.9 billion (about $26 million) in equity, ¥1.8 billion in debt and a ¥0.7 billion credit facility. It takes Facilo's total funding to about ¥8.3 billion (about $56 million).
Existing investor Globis Capital Partners led the round. Other participants named in reports include Coral Capital, Angel Bridge, new investor Spiral Innovation Partners, DBJ Capital, Dentsu Ventures, i-nest capital, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Forstartups Capital.
The fund run by Dentsu Ventures and Dentsu's Startup Growth Partners unit said separately that it had invested and would offer Facilo its marketing, customer experience design and business growth expertise. Its announcement also confirmed that Facilo had made Collabit a group company.
Consolidation in Japanese property tech
By calling Collabit the first step of an M&A strategy, Facilo signalled that it intends to grow partly by buying specialist tools and fitting them into one platform, rather than building every product itself. It did not say how much of the new round is set aside for acquisitions.
For Collabit, joining a larger group gives its valuation tools a route to Facilo's 2,300 brokerage offices. For Facilo, AI pricing fills a gap at the start of the selling process, before an agent has a listing to manage.
Neither company has said whether HowMa and AI Satei Pro will keep their own brands or be folded into Facilo's products.
