Amazon Alexa Fund recently invested in Plant PrefabRIALTO, CA–Venture capital is pouring into the property industry with real estate tech startups securing $3.4 billion in funding last year, according to CB Insights.
A good bit of this has been from funds focused on commercial real estate, such as JLL Spark, which recently invested $6.5 million in HqO, a commercial real estate tech start-up focusing on the tenant experience, along with several other investors including Navitas Capital. The lure for investors was the company's trove of anonymized data, said Travis Putnam, partner at Navitas Capital. By giving landlords a better understanding of client demographics, tenant interests, onsite retail patterns, and overall occupancy trends, they can make more informed decisions and increase NOI, he said.
At the same time, pure play technology funds have moved into this space with the intention of introducing the same type of disruption seen in other sectors.
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Erika Morphy
Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.
