Minna Song, Co-Founder and CEO of EliseAI, built an AI company that now touches millions of lives across housing and healthcare, starting from a simple frustration with how inefficient rental communication could be. Song graduated from MIT with a degree in computer science, having previously interned at Microsoft and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and met her eventual co-founder Tony Stoyanov while both were undergraduates at Cambridge.
The idea for what would become EliseAI came from Song’s own experience working as an administrative assistant at a residential real estate firm in New York City, where she witnessed firsthand how slow responses, missed calls, and endless email back-and-forth created friction for both renters and property staff. In 2017, she co-founded the company — originally called MeetElise — to build AI agents that could handle leasing, renewals, payments, and maintenance communication automatically, providing instant, human-like responses across email, SMS, phone, and chat.
Song has said that when she and her co-founder started, many people told them housing and healthcare were the wrong industries to build in — too complex, too slow-moving, too resistant to change. That skepticism has been repeatedly proven wrong: EliseAI’s platform is now used by over 700 property owners and operators, including 75% of the nation’s 50 largest property managers, and the company reached unicorn status in 2024 after raising $75 million in Series D funding.
Under Song’s leadership, EliseAI expanded well beyond its original leasing use case, evolving into what she describes as an “operating system” for housing, while also extending into healthcare workflows. In 2025, the company raised $250 million in Series E funding, and by mid-2026 had crossed $200 million in annual recurring revenue — its fifth consecutive year of doubling growth. Song was recognized as a 2026 CNBC Changemaker for her work leading EliseAI’s rapid expansion, and continues to push the company’s mission that AI can make essential, everyday systems work better for everyone.
