The HomeWise AI Story: Why We Built This Company

We Started by Building the Wrong Thing

When we launched HomeWise AI, we built software. Beautiful, intelligent software designed to help home service contractors manage their businesses better.

Nobody used it.

Not because the tools were bad. Because contractors don't want to learn software. They want to install heat pumps. They want to fix HVAC systems. They want to do the work they're great at — and they want someone else to handle the rest.

That was the moment everything changed for us. We stopped building tools for contractors to use. We started building AI that does the work for them.

The Problem We Can't Ignore

America's homes are aging. The median owner-occupied home is now 40 years old — older than at any point in recorded history. Household electricity costs have risen over 30% since 2020, and the average family now spends more than $250 a month on utilities. Millions of homes need energy upgrades — better insulation, modern HVAC, heat pumps — but the system to deliver those upgrades is broken.

The people who actually do the work are small home service contractors — HVAC technicians, electricians, plumbers, energy auditors. There are over 146,000 HVAC contractor businesses in the US alone, and the vast majority are small, locally-owned firms. They are the backbone of the American home industry.

But they're in crisis.

The industry is short 110,000 technicians today. Over half the current workforce is over 45 and heading toward retirement. At current rates, the gap could reach 300,000 by 2031. The technicians who are out there are exceptional at their trade — but the industry asks them to do far more than their trade. They spend over 850 hours a year on paperwork, scheduling, rebate applications, invoicing, and customer follow-ups. That's a third of their working time not spent on the skilled work they were trained for.

Meanwhile, demand is surging. Americans bought 4.1 million heat pumps in 2024 — 32% more than gas furnaces — and it's the fourth consecutive year heat pumps have outsold fossil fuel heating. The residential heat pump market is projected to reach $52 billion by 2034. The work is there. The workers aren't keeping up — not because they lack skill, but because they lack support.

What HomeWise Actually Does

HomeWise AI builds intelligent systems that power the back office and growth engine for home service contractors.

AI that runs the back office. We pair experienced operations managers with AI that handles the work behind the scenes: scheduling, dispatch, rebate processing, customer communications, invoicing, permit coordination, and more. Our AI systems process paperwork, coordinate operations, and manage workflows automatically — so every contractor we serve can focus entirely on their craft.

AI that drives growth. We use AI to build and execute growth strategies for contractors — identifying the right partnerships, optimizing their market positioning, building referral systems, and developing the kind of organic marketing that turns first-time customers into loyal, repeat clients. We help contractors build real communities around their business — homeowners who trust them, refer their neighbors, and come back year after year. We've helped contractors multiply their revenue not through ad spend or paid leads, but through authentic relationships and operational excellence powered by technology.

Think of it this way: a great contractor is like a great surgeon. You don't want your surgeon scheduling appointments and filling out insurance forms. You want them in the operating room. The entire healthcare system is built around letting doctors do medicine. No one has built that system for contractors.

We're building it — and AI is how we do it at scale.

A New Path for Contractors

Private equity has been aggressively rolling up the home services industry. PE-backed acquisitions of HVAC contractors rose 88% year-over-year in the first half of 2025. Firms like Apex Service Partners have acquired over 100 companies. Goldman Sachs completed a $1.7 billion purchase of a single HVAC platform. There are over 29,000 independently-owned HVAC companies being targeted for acquisition.

For decades, selling to PE was the only way a small contractor could access professional operations, marketing, and modern technology. Give up ownership. Lose control. Become an employee in the business you built.

HomeWise offers a different path.

We give contractors access to enterprise-level operations, AI-powered technology, and strategic growth resources — without them having to learn it themselves, without giving up ownership, and without selling their business. They stay independent. They stay in control. They run a healthier, stronger business — powered by AI they never have to touch.

The AI That Powers It All

This is what makes HomeWise different — and what makes working here exciting.

We're not building another SaaS dashboard. We're building AI systems that actually do work — systems that process complex rebate applications, intelligently schedule crews across multiple contractors, automate customer communications, and extract insights from operational data to help contractors grow.

Our vision is to build the most capable AI operations platform in the home services industry. Every advance in language models, document processing, and intelligent automation makes our service better, our operations more efficient, and our contractors more successful. We're solving hard, real-world AI problems — natural language processing for permit and rebate paperwork, intelligent scheduling and dispatch optimization, automated workflow coordination across dozens of contractors — in an industry that technology has overlooked for decades.

The home services industry represents over $120 billion in annual revenue in HVAC alone. It's one of the largest sectors of the American economy that has barely been touched by modern AI. We intend to change that.

Why Now

For the first time ever, this is possible.

Technology that empowers contractors has existed for years — CRMs, dispatch software, marketing platforms, data analytics. But until now, that technology was only accessible to PE-backed contractors and large operations with dedicated IT teams, office staff, and six-figure software budgets. The top 5% of contractors had access to enterprise-grade tools. The other 95% — the small, independent businesses that make up the vast majority of this industry — were left behind.

AI changes that equation completely. For the first time, the same operational intelligence, marketing strategy, and business optimization that was reserved for the biggest players can be delivered to a two-person HVAC shop in Quincy or a family-owned plumbing company in Newark. AI doesn't require a contractor to hire an office manager, learn a platform, or change how they work. It works behind the scenes, adapting to them.

That's why now is the moment. Not just because energy demand is surging — it is, driven by extreme weather, electrification, and an aging grid. Not just because the workforce is shrinking — it is, with tens of thousands of technicians retiring each year. But because AI has finally made it possible to bring world-class business support to every contractor, not just the ones backed by billion-dollar firms.

Every hour of admin work we take off a contractor's plate is an hour they spend doing the work that matters. Every AI system we build makes the existing workforce more productive, more available, and more capable of serving the millions of homeowners who need them.

The world needs more contractors doing more work. HomeWise AI makes that possible — for all of them.

Who We Are

I'm Yuna, and I started HomeWise because I couldn't look away from this problem.

I sat in contractors' offices at night learning their workflows. I filed rebate applications by hand to understand every pain point. I built the software that nobody wanted to use — and then I had the harder realization that the real product wasn't a tool. It was the work itself, powered by AI.

We've since built partnerships with workforce development programs, applied for grants to prove our model can reduce the soft costs of home energy upgrades, and most importantly — we've gotten our hands dirty with real contractors, proving that this works.

HomeWise AI is the story of an industry that deserves better — and a team that's building the AI to deliver it.

We use AI to power the backbone of America's home industry — so the people who keep our homes running can focus on exactly that.