Chicago-based Antares Labs, a company developing bespoke artificial intelligence solutions for real estate operations, has announced its launch with a $7.25 million seed funding round, as reported by Commercial Observer. The round was led by Proptech venture capital firm Fifth Wall, with support from investors including Base10 Partners, Bloomberg Beta and Sandwith Ventures.
Noaman Ahmad, co-founder and CEO of Antares Labs, previously served as Chief Financial Officer at proptech company Doma and technology consulting firm Keystone. Ahmad told Commercial Observer that he identified a gap between the real estate industry's vast data and its utilisation of technologies that could enable optimal leverage of that data.
Ahmad emphasised that many companies have realised they need to harness the potential of AI; otherwise, they risk losing their competitive edge within the next one to two years. Antares Labs' customised AI systems analyse and augment clients' institutional knowledge, proprietary data, and workflows.
Antares' current client, real estate developer and investment manager Quarterra, uses these services to identify and target new submarkets and land parcels, Ahmad noted. He added that Antares Labs approaches the market differently; they do not offer a tool or an agent, but instead engage with clients about how they envision enterprise-wide AI.
Further use cases for Antares Labs' consulting model include shortening the time between tenant turnovers for a retail park-focused Real Estate Investment Trust, and extracting current and future inventory information for an industrial landlord. Antares Labs' platforms are designed to be model-agnostic, meaning a client can choose between providers such as OpenAI or Gemini and easily adapt the systems to needs or cost requirements.
Fifth Wall, headquartered in Los Angeles, supports some of the leading companies in the proptech sector, including Opendoor and Bilt Rewards. In early July, the firm backed the launch and $5 million seed round of smart home system One Raven and also participated in a $1.7 billion funding round for Travis Kalanick's (former Uber CEO) robotics company Atoms.
