Property assessments sit at the middle of home appraisals, insurance claims, renovation projects, and quite a lot of other vital processes. Inaccurate or delayed assessments can set projects back and stick consumers with higher costs.

Now, a platform first developed at MIT makes creating detailed property assessments as easy as snapping just a few pictures. The alumni-founded startup Hosta a.i. analyzes images to provide precise measurements of spaces, detailed floor plans, 3D models of rooms, and bills of materials. It could also evaluate the conditions of materials to evaluate damage and discover risks, equivalent to using flammable materials or inadequate sprinkler to volume ratios.

“Contractor and insurance firms rarely provide you with the identical estimate,” says Hosta a.i. CEO and co-founder Henriette Fleischmann MBA ’19, who founded the corporate with executive chair and CTO Rachelle Villalon SM ’08, PhD ’17. “Our technology is accelerating these processes and reducing friction for the adjuster, contractor, and the patron. We’re helping people get their homes repaired more quickly, so that they can feel like home again.”

Hosta a.i. is currently working with insurers, contractors, and mortgage lenders to provide everyone fast and accurate details about their built surroundings. The founders say they’re still considering the chances unlocked by giving people a whole view of properties without forcing them to go on-site.

“I feel there’s a possibility to assist speed the transition to more energy efficient buildings,” Fleischmann says. “We will create an understanding of how heat moves through a room. There are many applications across industries that require built-environment understanding.”

A technology comes together

Villalon worked as an architect, software engineer, and consultant before founding Hosta. As a third-generation architect, she had early exposure to the challenges on construction job sites, from documentation to project coordination, in addition to the evolution of computer-aided design (CAD) systems.

At MIT, her research focused on applying artificial intelligence to problems within the built environment, including ways to show machines about architecture and ways to show images into 3D maps and objects. She spent her time as a master’s and PhD student within the Design and Computation Group throughout the School of Architecture and Planning in addition to on the Media Lab and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

“There have been so many problems in architecture and construction, and I just remember considering I needed to further my technical and theoretical foundations to challenge the bounds of current industry practice,” Villalon says. “MIT became this utopia of data and knowledge for me. It helped me construct a critical view of the industry and apply latest creative technologies to it.”

Originally from Germany, Fleischmann worked at large firms within the automotive and fashion industries before coming to the MIT Sloan School of Management, where she received her MBA while specializing in AI and entrepreneurship.

“It was a tremendous program,” Fleischmann says. “It helped me regain energy and take into consideration what was next. I loved how hands-on MIT was. I spent lots of time on the [Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship] and gravitated toward tech-heavy startups.”

By the point Fleischmann met Villalon, the PhD graduate was in search of a co-founder who could help drive the commercialization of Hosta a.i.’s technology. With a prototype at hand, a patent filed, and market testing underway with Hosta a.i.’s advisor Jose Pacheco MBA ’12, Villalon and Fleischmann made big strides at MIT.

“I remember sitting in an MIT classroom, and I had taken an image in Constructing 9 without an app or special sensors, uploaded it with our first API, and out got here this list of results and floorplans that showed all of the items, their measurements, and the way big the spaces were,” Villalon says. “Once I first saw that output, I just considered how much time I’d spent as an architect attempting to manually recreate spaces, and now all I needed to do was snap an image.”

The founders received funding from MIT Sandbox and entered into several MIT startup accelerator programs, including the School of Architecture and Planning’s MITdesignX, the MIT Industrial Liaison Program’s STEX25, and the Trust Center’s delta v accelerator. Hosta a.i. has continued working with MIT through the CSAIL Alliances program and the Industrial Liaison Program.

Today, anybody in a house or on a job site can click a link and follow Hosta a.i.’s prompts to take photos using their phone. Once the photos are uploaded, Hosta a.i. uses artificial intelligence to mechanically create floor plans and CAD models. Beyond measurements, the software can classify all of the objects and materials within the room to create an in depth bill of materials — key information to find out how much a project will cost.

“With our solution, you’ll be able to just snap an image of an area. There’s no app, you don’t need any architectural knowledge, there’s no LIDAR or anything heavy involved, and you’ll be able to extract all of this information,” Villalon says. “We’re also constructing expert reasoning into the technology. It’s really game-changing within the industry.”

Scaling for impact

The founders say their solution cuts 80 percent of the day out of property assessments while avoiding the errors related to manual assessments.

“The insurance adjustor gets a package that lets them create a claim estimate in minutes,” Fleischmann says. “We realized the large insurance firms are making estimates 1000’s of times day-after-day. That amounts to lots of time and dollars saved.”

Hosta a.i. struggled to scale at first, but in-person challenges brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic helped speed up the business. The founders now say they’re firmly in growth mode.

“At MIT we created momentum, but constructing a deep tech company is difficult,” Fleischmann says. “My advice for founders is to attempt to create a minimum viable product quickly to act as a market feeler after which construct on top of that.”

As Hosta a.i. continues to scale, the founders consider the technology holds promise to assist firms cut a big source of their greenhouse gas emissions.

“Our vision is to cut back carbon emissions by leading the world’s transition to virtual property assessments,” Fleischmann says. “We’re ensuring there’s a shift within the industry as a complete, not only in insurance but in your complete built environment.”