While some of the largest commercial real estate companies are shouldering the challenges and massive costs of developing proprietary, AI-powered tools, this shift marks less a turning point for Proptech than a sign that the commercial real estate industry has never more seriously leveraged technology to run its business efficiently. General speculation that Proptech start-ups and their venture capital funders might be on the retreat increased in the spring, as a series of multi-billion dollar transactions in the industry caused a stir.
On 4th May, Anthropic announced a USD 1.5 billion joint venture with leading financial firms, including Blackstone and Goldman Sachs. Originally named Claude Partner Network and later rebranded as Ode, this company will tailor AI solutions and provide support to selected clients. In a press release, the partner group stated that mid-sized firms lack the in-house resources to develop and operate groundbreaking implementations. The new network was not exclusively aimed at the real estate sector but clarifies the potential to reshape Proptech at the enterprise level. General Atlantic, Leonard Green, Apollo Global Management, GIC, and Sequoia Capital, all funders of the Claude network, clearly recognise the opportunities.
On the same day in May, OpenAI announced the USD 10 billion OpenAI Deployment Company, a joint venture with TPG, Brookfield, Bain Capital, Advent, SoftBank, and Dragoneer, which focuses directly on real estate portfolio companies. Industry experts hope that in-house Proptech development will take over the same core operations that independent Proptech companies already manage, such as portfolio management and underwriting.
Nevertheless, the same experts view these commitments from leading investors and landlords as the emergence of another pillar of the Proptech investment market, rather than a sign that VCs, start-ups, and independent players need to fear being overshadowed by capital and technical expertise. The figures support this: Venture capital investments in Proptech reached USD 16.7 billion in 2025, according to the Center for Real Estate Technology and Innovation (CRETI), a 68 per cent increase year-on-year. AI-native companies secured USD 4.5 billion of this, increasing their share of Proptech VC funds by 42 per cent year-on-year – almost double that of their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) counterparts, who face a genuine threat from AI innovators. This suggests that investors are not so much abandoning the category as rotating hard into AI-native newcomers and away from older SaaS models.
Josh Panknin, Director of Real Estate AI Research and Innovation at Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, has examined the vast, USD 50 billion to USD 60 billion Proptech start-up landscape and predicts that larger players will find enterprise-level AI development more difficult than it seems. "Real estate firms are not technology development companies and historically haven't been as successful as them," Panknin said. This leaves room for a robust start-up space in a decentralised industry. "It's very fragmented – the data that is generated in real estate comes from very different sources, different formats, different market definitions," he said, which prevents Proptech applications from scaling across markets and issues. This also means that the Proptech start-up market has not produced many billion-dollar unicorns to date.
Panknin emphasised that the greatest potential lies not in point solutions and workflow automation, but in focusing on infrastructure and fundamental capabilities. The five largest independent Proptech companies – CoStar Group, Yardi Systems, RealPage, Procore Technologies, and AppFolio – focus on market data, property management, and construction management, specific areas of the complex, multifaceted CRE industry. Together, they reported revenues of approximately USD 9.2 billion in fiscal year 2025 and are expected to shape Proptech for some time to come. Nevertheless, the barriers that once protected Proptech incumbents – technical complexity, cost, and talent – are eroding.
Ashkan Zandieh, Managing Director of CRETI Ventures at CRETI, describes the change as significant but subtle. "Large owners building AI capabilities will not shrink the Proptech sector," Zandieh said. "We have seen this in banking, retail, and healthcare, where internal corporate software teams ultimately fostered larger vendor ecosystems. What we are seeing in real estate is more a sign of market maturity than a threat to Proptech." He considers the headline-grabbing deals at least to be overrated.
Blackstone's push into AI aims to improve portfolio intelligence, as this is how the USD 1.35 trillion asset manager generates revenue, and using internal data will create efficiency. Brookfield is also seeking enterprise-wide AI solutions to cover its vast global portfolio. Neither poses a significant threat to Proptech, according to Zandieh: "They are not in the business of selling software solutions." Most venture capital firms are still focused on start-ups addressing discrete niches of the diffuse real estate industry: construction, transaction management, design, and the fundamental work of managing large commercial properties. Travis Connors, Co-founder and General Partner at building ventures, a Boston-based VC firm whose portfolio includes Built Robotics, Dyn, and Clearstory, said the Claude partnership and Brookfield's tech build-out create "a louder environment" for start-ups. However, he reiterated Zandieh's view that the industry is simply maturing and learning to integrate AI into its operations.
