GrepBeat last wrote about Path Intelligence in July of 2025. Path is a Charlotte-based startup providing AI-driven solutions in the real estate industry, primarily through AI that acts as an agent to facilitate better conversations with prospective buyers.
For this piece, we caught up with Founder and CEO Nate Robert-Eze to learn more about him, how Path has changed since pitching at Grep-a-Palooza in 2025, and the assorted benefits of an AI system that helps buyers explore homes.
GrepBeat: Before we get started, for readers who may not be familiar, what’s the elevator pitch for Path Intelligence?
Nate Robert-Eze: Path is the AI Sales Agent for Real Estate. We put an AI inside a property that has a real conversation with a buyer, at any hour, in 42-plus languages, and answers the questions they actually have while they explore.
A buyer gives a normal listing about a minute. They stay with Path 10 times longer. We allow developers, brokers, and agents to have more conversations with their buyers 24/7, and save time for everyone.
GB: When we got in touch, we asked you to look back on your last feature in GrepBeat, from the summer of 2025. Reading about where you were then, what stands out as the biggest change?
Robert-Eze: When we talked last summer I described Path as AI-powered virtual tours. We have now expanded our scope.
The change is that we stopped building something that shows property and started building something that markets and sells property. A tour is a thing you look at. A sales agent is a thing that works. Once we understood that difference, everything else followed, including who we sell to and what they pay for.
The other change is location. We were primarily Charlotte-based then and I am between Charlotte and Miami now, which put us in close contact to the developers we serve.
GB: You recently had a significant pitch competition victory. Tell us about that event and what Path came away from it with.
Robert-Eze: We won the Open Pitch competition at Invest Fest in Atlanta this month. Roughly 400 companies applied, four of us made the stage, and it was decided in front of 31,300 people.
We came away with a $125,000 investment from the Open Opportunity Fund, the venture fund SoftBank, founded in 2020 and later spun out to Dr. Paul Judge and Marcelo Claure, together with Earn Your Leisure. Judge was on the judging panel along with Lala Anthony, Angela Simmons, and Master P.
The money matters for sure, but what matters more is that people who have seen thousands of companies watched us for a few minutes and decided to put their name on us. That meant a lot to us.
GB: How has your team grown or evolved since we last spoke?
Robert-Eze: We have hired a new engineer to own product but we have grown in a non-traditional way, honestly. We build AI that does a job for our customers, so we have to practice what we preach. We started running AI internally the same way.
A good part of our operation, including outbound, communications, and reporting, runs on AI teammates that I manage the way you would manage people. If we are going to tell developers that an AI can carry a real conversation with their buyers, we should be willing to run our own company that way first, and it’s working decently for us.
GB: What milestones or accomplishments are you most proud of?
Robert-Eze: For sure the NC IDEA SEED grant in late 2025. One of six companies out of 177, and it came from North Carolina, which is where this started.
Ritz-Carlton Residences, Hines, Kolter Homes, and Grubb Ventures putting Path in front of their buyers.
Inman naming me to their Future Leaders of Real Estate class this year, because that one came from inside the industry we are trying to change.
GB: You’ve been on the scene for a little while now. People may know you as a founder, but perhaps less so as a human being. Tell us something we don’t know about you that has nothing to do with your life as a founder.
Robert-Eze: I play four instruments: drums, keyboard, guitar, and bass. I was in the fashion industry in college (and a little after). I had a clothing brand in Indianapolis before any of this. It got pretty big in Muncie, where i went to school, and in Indianapolis.
I also played basketball all throughout my high school career. Indiana was a huge basketball state.
GB: What partners or organizations (service providers, advisors, investors, if any) have been most helpful to you?
Robert-Eze: NC IDEA for sure. They backed us pretty early, and that money is the reason there was something to show anyone later. CLT Impact has been great as well. Chase and Jim have both served as amazing mentors to me.
NVIDIA Inception and Innovation Lab have been awesome. They have exposed us to products and resources that have transformed our product for the better.
And our advisory board has done the unglamorous work. Lauren Maillian, Dante Simpson, and Walter Hughes have each told me something I did not want to hear at exactly the moment I needed to hear it. I guess that’s what it’s all about.
GB: What is your next, biggest challenge?
Robert-Eze: Distribution. The product works and the numbers hold up, so the constraint now is how many properties we can reach and how fast. We built an internal GTM engine product that should help a lot with that.
We are finishing a $2.3M seed round that gives us the runway to add more fuel to the fire.
GB: If you could go back in time to speak to yourself on the day you founded your startup, what advice would you give your younger self?
Robert-Eze: Probably to just simplify things more. Say the plain version of what you do, sooner. Speak directly to the problem.
I spent a long time describing the technology because the technology was impressive. Nobody buys “impressive.” They buy an answer to a problem they already have. The day I started saying “we sell homes faster” instead of “we build immersive experiences,” the conversations changed completely.
GB: People ask founders about their startups nonstop…. Is there anything about Path Intelligence that you don’t get asked about, but that you’d like to speak to?
Robert-Eze: Who gets a straight answer about a property.
Property is where most household wealth in this country sits, and access to it has never been evenly handed out. Not the financing, and not the information either. Whether you get a real answer about a building has always depended on who you are, who you know, and whether somebody decides you are worth their time.
Our AI does not make that judgment. It gives the same answer at 2am to someone browsing on their phone as it gives to a buyer walking in with a broker. People ask us questions they would be embarrassed to ask a person: What does this actually cost to own? Is this neighborhood safe for my kids? Can I really afford this?
Luxury developers pay for it today, and that is what funds the work. It is not where it ends.
GB: Finally, you finish a long, grueling day of starting up. You’re hungry and/or thirsty. Where in Charlotte are you headed?
Robert-Eze: Definitely my guys over at Spice. Nana and Baff really did their thing over there.
