With 4,500 monthly paying customers, Virtual Staging AI, a division of Harvard Innovation Labs, aims to revolutionize the real estate and staging sectors. Over the previous ten months, the firm bootstrapped to $1 million in ARR and is currently producing more than half a million renders monthly.

Michael Bonacina, the CEO and co-founder of the startup, told TechCrunch that while looking for an apartment in Boston so he could attend Harvard, he came across a listing that let users see how the space would appear when furnished. With a background in computer vision, Bonacina made the decision to improve that experience and make it simpler for Realtors to include it in their listings.

Following a course on startup research and development, Bonacina and fellow Harvard student Mikhail Andreev made the decision to launch a virtual staging company with the goal of saving time and money for real estate agents and property sellers.

Realtors may quickly add furniture to photos of empty rooms by using the startup's application. The program provides Realtors with realistic photographs of furnished rooms so they don't have to post images of empty rooms in a listing. An empty space can be transformed by realtors into a bedroom, living room, office, playroom, etc.

The program can also be used by realtors to swap out furniture in photos for new furnishings. For example, the startup's tool may replace mismatched furniture in an image with modern furniture by removing it.


You can make as many revisions as you like to an image if you don't like how it turns out.

Although there are a lot of AI tools available for creating photos, according to Bonacina, these technologies cannot be used for virtual staging or real estate since you can only make so many changes to an image without distorting the true nature of the property.

According to Bonacina, "if you put an empty room into DALL-E, it might add an extra door or something, or it might turn the window into a wall painting." That clearly represents the property incorrectly. Something that is highly tailored to the requirements of real estate is needed.

Online Production The AI model can identify the locations of the floor, roof, mirrors, and doors by analyzing the three-dimensional structure of a space. Then, taking into account the Realtor's preferences, the AI model selects the furniture that fits the best.

Realtors may employ someone to stage a space digitally with Photoshop or another program, but Virtual Staging AI offers a quicker and less expensive solution. The startup's most costly subscription, which costs $69 per month and includes 250 photos, is priced at $12 per month and includes six photos.

In addition, Bonacina notes that the startup's creation of an intuitive interface in contrast to other generative AI offerings was crucial. The company intended to establish a simple and accessible tool for all Realtors because, according to the National Association of Realtors, the typical age of all real estate agents in the association in the United States is sixty.

Although Bonacina and Andreev used their own money as well as donations from friends and family to launch Virtual Staging AI, the company has not yet received any outside funding.

Over time, real estate has developed further, ranging from solely providing in-person showings to now allowing virtual tours. It should come as no surprise that artificial intelligence, which has revolutionized sectors like robotics and healthcare, is now advancing the real estate industry.