HABU (YC F26) — Like Crosby, but for real estate development
HABU is an AI-native real estate development firm that helps real estate investors deploy capital to build housing faster, at lower cost, and with higher yield. We're building an internal AI-native operating system that completes 90%+ of development tasks at 95% faster processing speeds while delivering the same outcomes customers expect externally: high yield, low risk projects.
HABU is a Y Combinator company in the Fall 2026 batch. Its directory entry describes it as: Like Crosby, but for real estate development. The founders listed are Bryan Tharalson (Founder/CEO), Junhao Chen (Founder/CTO) (Y Combinator directory entry, September 28, 2026).
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HABU is an AI-native real estate development firm that helps real estate investors deploy capital to build housing faster, at lower cost, and with higher yield.
We're building an internal AI-native operating system that completes 90%+ of development tasks at 95% faster processing speeds while delivering the same outcomes customers expect externally: high yield, low risk projects. We're selling the outcome, not the inputs to the outcome.
Developers are service providers for white-collar investors: they find land, construct buildings, and operate and sell them for a profit. Our customers don't care how the projects are sourced or managed, only that they are completed on time and produce the forecasted returns.
We use agentic workflows, geospatial analysis and mapping, and development-specific workflow automation to manage the end-to-end process. The result is 5x more projects per FTE compared to a non-AI developer, 20% faster project schedules, and 10-15% lower total project costs.
We're *not* long term property owners, strictly the service provider (fee/merchant developer).
$160B was deployed into multifamily in 2025 and $534B into commercial real estate overall. Developers naturally have high operating margins and we are building to be the most operationally and capital efficient developer in the country.
Starting first with multifamily in Phoenix and then expanding nationally.
Checked away from the directory entry. What is below does not come from the company's Y Combinator page.
HABU is the first AI-native real estate development company. We develop Class A, market-rate multifamily in the Phoenix MSA on behalf of institutional capital: more projects, faster, at lower cost.
The title and description the site itself served, answering 200. Not a cached copy and not the company's directory entry — what was live when we asked.
Bryan Tharalson
Founder/CEO
CEO/Cofounder at HABU, building AI-native real estate development. Previously a multifamily developer managing $80M+ of build-to-rent and commercial. Top-ranked grad in the Master's of Real Estate Development program from ASU. Before that, long career in sales & GTM leadership, ee#5 and sales hire#1 at Mutiny (YC '18). Double undergrad of economics and sustainability. Started first company at age 23 doing environment remediation (redeveloping brownfield sites).
Junhao Chen
Founder/CTO
CTO/Cofounder at HABU, building AI-native real estate development. Previously at Meta, where I led an internal AI Ops Solutions team working across global operations, product, and policy, building systems that improved how Meta sourced, measured, and scaled data for AI products. Before that, worked in technology consulting at Accenture and managed aviation logistics and operations in the U.S. Navy. Immigrant, Navy veteran, and first-generation college graduate.
Founders, titles and bios as the company published them. Photographs are our own copies of the ones on that record, so they do not break when the original link expires.
One of 28 companies held here in Real Estate and Construction.
No investor is drawn from a Form D — the form states how many invested and never who. The one investor on this graph is named because a batch has exactly one.
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