How CINC shipped a full AI suite in 3 months
When Hg backed CINC Systems in late 2023, AI wasn't the headline.
CINC is the leading provider of software to property management companies running US community associations. The system of record for accounting, communications and operations across 55,000 communities and 6 million residential units.
It's a sector most investors would have called "AI-lagging." Then the market moved and so did they; building, integrating, and scaling a full AI product suite, Cephai, in a single quarter.
THE PIVOT
One quarter, not 18 months.
In early 2025, a key competitor purchased an AI-first product in the same end market. CINC, working alongside Hg Catalyst, had a choice: respond at the pace of regular product development (12 to 18 months) or compress that into a single quarter.
You won't be surprised to read that a quarter was preferred. A combined team of CINC product leaders, Catalyst engineers and a specialist tiger team mapped the highest-friction workflows for community managers, whiteboarded the Skills that would solve them, and shipped.
End to end: about 3 months. About $3 million of initial investment and more than $10 million in total investment. A live product called Cephai.
The numbers that matter
30%+
of new cARR now come from AI products.
10–20%
reduction in baseline R&D budget through Skills engineering, capacity reinvested in shipping more Skills.
$2m
of annualised costs taken out of customer support through AI-assisted resolution.
30%
of CINC's client base now uses Cephai.
Skills built for the work that fills the day
Community management companies do nuanced, repetitive work for dozens of associations every month. Cephai targets that work directly with a growing suite of Skills. Three to focus on.
01 Invoice ingestion
AP work that previously meant manually keying invoices from the maintenance team, the security firm or the pool company now flows through an automated ingest-and-approve workflow.
02 Budget & board packs
Cephai pulls data straight from CINC's accounting backbone, generates the narrative and produces the pack at the click of a button. What used to take hours of copy-paste is now a review job.
03 Resident communications
"Can I park here? When does the pool open? Can I build a fence?" Cephai queries the underlying HOA rules and drafts responses, freeing community managers up for the higher-value relationships that drive retention.
01 Invoice ingestion
AP work that previously meant manually keying invoices from the maintenance team, the security firm or the pool company now flows through an automated ingest-and-approve workflow.
02 Budget & board packs
Cephai pulls data straight from CINC's accounting backbone, generates the narrative and produces the pack at the click of a button. What used to take hours of copy-paste is now a review job.
03 Resident communications
"Can I park here? When does the pool open? Can I build a fence?" Cephai queries the underlying HOA rules and drafts responses, freeing community managers up for the higher-value relationships that drive retention.
“Community management is a labour business. 70% of cost is people. 5–10% is IT. Cephai is going after the 70%.”
CINC Investment Team, Hg
Why owning the system of record matters
A handful of AI-only startups have tried to bolt agents onto this space without owning the system of record. None have stuck.
Unlike those purchased and bolted-on AI features, Cephai’s intelligence systemis embedded into CINC's platform; the data, the customer history, the workflow context all in one place.
A bolt-on AI without the underlying system is a feature and limits its agents to limited, configured workflows. AI integrated into a platform provides broad visibility to information that Cephai’s Skills can incorporate.
Building the capability inside
Over our partnership with CINC, we see a clear path for AI to make up 30–40% of per-door unit economics, sitting alongside software and payments, and to expand monetisation by 30%+. We're charging for value in an AI world, and the value is measurable.
The next chapter is about owning it internally. The Catalyst tiger team gave CINC the running start; through 2026, CINC's own product and engineering organisation is taking the reins. The roadmap doubles the Skill count again over the next 18 months. The labour pool we're addressing is enormous; we've only just started.
About How CINC shipped a full AI suite in 3 months
CINC Systems is the AI-native platform for community association management, trusted by more than 1,000 management companies serving 55,000+ associations and 6 million+ doors. Built on more than twenty years of integrated platform data spanning accounting, operations, resident experience, banking, and payments, CINC processed more than $25 billion in community payments in 2025.
Cephai, CINC’s intelligence system, is woven natively into that foundation to help management companies reduce tedious work, increase visibility, and operate with greater efficiency.
2005
Founded
2023
Partnered with Hg
USA
Country
Tax & Accounting
Category