Five Startups Pushing AI into Proptech
Proptech has been slow to adopt AI, but that’s changing: A growing number of startups are developing AI-based systems targeted for the proptech industry.
By Sunny Bell, Sabinok
“Proptech” is technology created to improve upon the built environment. In other words, it is technology that helps people in real estate to execute their jobs. The concept of proptech has existed since the 1980s from the introduction to personal computers and spreadsheets such as microsoft excel. The big boom in recognition began in the 2000s with the digitalization from expensive on-site software to cloud computing. In more recent years, proptech has evolved from specialty paper forms to devices, websites, and now to today’s AI-based proptech services.
Writing about proptech startups in Forbes earlier this year, journalist Alison Coleman, observed, “Rather than trying to reinvent the entire system overnight, they are fixing the specific friction points that slow deals, complicate management and cloud decision-making.”
There are four main areas in which proptech is transforming commercial real estate (CRE):
Real Estate FinTech. Transactions transformed by AI allow speedier turnover for the analysis of transactions and better results that can create more areas for profitability for the client. For instance, the billion-dollar company BILT turns large expenses such as rent and mortgage into a source of credit through a points system.
Smart Buildings. AI can facilitate building maintenance by notifying teams instantly when alarms go off, creating faster turnaround times and minimizing damage. AI technology can also predict when certain systems are in need of a check-up, to prevent maintenance flags in the first place.
The Sharing Economy. AI-powered digital platforms allow individuals to fully optimize their usages of assets all while cutting back on time spent searching. For instance, a landlord can use the AI assets instead of searching for potential tenants, or a franchisee can use them to find an appropriate space.
Construction Technology (ConTech). Contech is AI-powered construction software to ease the design, plan, and building processes of real estate. Contech simplifies and improves the construction process through real-time progress updates, projected cost estimates, and speedy turnover periods.
AI and Real Estate FinTech
AI-powered Financial Technology (fintech) is making it easier to catch errors, and gain profit in real estate transactions. Startups in this category are disrupting the real estate market with AI technology that provides its user faster, accurate, transparent, and accessible results.
Fintech Startup: Bilt Rewards, New York, NY
Bilt Rewards is the first ever “rent rewards” company. It is designed to reward customers for paying their most costly expenses – their rent or mortgage – on time. Founded in 2019 by CEO Ankur Jain and launched to the public in 2021, Bilt has raised $850 million to date and is currently valued at $10.75 billion. In an interview for The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Awards program, Jain explained how launching their product during Covid was unexpectedly fortuitous:
“Every crisis creates opportunity. The pandemic was a catalyst for change because suddenly everyone was staying at home, business shut down, travel halted, and landlords worried if renters would pay their rent. It was a weird moment in time, and landlords liked the concept of offering incentives to renters. The confluence of factors made my business idea attractive to strategic investors.”
Bilt set itself apart from other fintech, and contech, startups by helping monetize clients for their regular and expensive financial transactions. AI and Smart Buildings
Smart Building Company: PassiveLogic, Salt Lake City, UT
Smart buildings use the Internet of Things (IoT), AI workflows, agentic AI and sensor technology to improve overall building operations. The main goals of smart building are to maximize asset value, reduce operational costs, and promote environmental sustainability.
PassiveLogic was founded in 2016 by CEO Troy Harvey. This company is the textbook fit for proptech, creating AI software for the man-made building environment.
PassiveLogic’s platform enables autonomous control (no need for human intervention) using their “robots of robots” approach of instruments like sensors, IoT devices, energy systems, and infrastructure. It lets customers with no prior technical training design custom autonomous systems and AI agents for the built world, managing full complexity from data centers and hospitals to office towers and industrial campuses. It is also one of the first companies to attempt on a broad scale to control entire buildings with an AI-driven autonomous system specialized to each user’s needs. PassiveLogic joined the NVIDIA inception program in 2019, and remains a member today.
In September 2025, PassiveLogic announced it had raised $74 million in Series C funding. According to Proptechbuzz, PassiveLogic projects the global autonomous buildings market could reach $1.3 trillion by 2030, compared with $191 billion for traditional building automation.
AveryIQ, Austin, TX
AveryIQ was founded in 2025 by Andrew Kouri and was incubated and funded by Y Combinator in 2026. The company focuses on assisting landlords and property managers via quick responses to potential and existing tenant queries regarding a space, both minimizing the time a space is empty and fulfilling the daily requests of existing tenants once rented.
Founder Kouri is a landlord himself and thus has an uncommon perspective into CRE software. Additionally, AveryIQ’s autonomous management functions as an AI real estate agent and property manager, saving the landlord expenses and handling clients specific needs such as leasing calls, tenant communications/ scheduling , and dispatching work orders.
Spacewise, Zurich, Switzerland
The sharing economy refers to the access of information and resources on a broader, technological scale. In CRE, the “sharing economy” applies to digital platforms that allow property owners and tenants to monetize or share their space dynamically. The field’s main objective is to make the notoriously illiquid and complex real estate market faster, more transparent, and more accessible.
Spacewise is a startup with locations in Zurich, Switzerland and Toronto, Canada using their digital database for tenants to find short-term leasing solutions. Founded by Chalid El Ashker in 2020. Through their AI powered database, they connect various customers, brands, consumers, and communities through commercial space, in locations worldwide. In March 2024, Spacewise partnered with Regency Centers, a large national owner, operator, and developer of shopping centers, using their platform for 25 of their top-tier centers. Through the platform’s ease in short term leasing. The proptech company integrates AI insights to provide location and pricing recommendations, automated workflows, and building highly marketable property descriptions that streamline portfolio management and maximize revenue. When prompted, Jan Hanak, the vice president of marketing and communications at Regency Centers expressed,
“Given our high amounts of traffic, grocery-anchored centers provide an exceptional opportunity to reach our shoppers even more frequently. Spacewise’s platform allows new retailers to find our audience, and for us to find new brands in an easy-to-use format.”
Following Regency Centers, Spacewise expanded their retail reach in June of 2025 to Canada with a partnership with RioCan, one of Canada’s largest real estate investment trusts. John McKinnon, vice president, asset management for Toronto-based RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust stated,
“We’re focused on maximizing the value of our real estate by driving additional traffic to our properties, because supporting our tenants ultimately drives property performance”
Spacewise’s innovative air powered leasing strategies create quick efficient leasings that are easy to use and find. They have outstretched their reach globally, and continue to market themselves at large commercial real estate conventions, such as ICSC Las Vegas this year (2026).
Plan0, San Francisco, CA
Construction Technology (contech) is the last core branch of proptech: the actual construction and development of the buildings themselves. Contech’s function is to decrease construction times, reduce material waste, and improve safety and precision on job sites.
Plan0, a construction cost intelligence platform, was founded in 2026 by Arash and Shervin Barati and quickly picked up by Y Combinator. It calls itself the “Bloomberg of Construction, ” after the Bloomberg Terminal became known as the centralized intelligence terminal and an indispensable product for the real-time data measure for Wall Street traders. Similar to this, PLAN0 aims to be the same kind of platform for real estate developers, investors, and contractors. Through their AI-driven real estate software and database of historical and real-time cost data to power their AI analytics. Plan0 is able to estimate the construction cost for an architectural project in minutes rather than weeks. In addition to estimated cost, clients can also actively see in real-time how their development or investment is progressing with respect to design; implications for the substitution of an element; and their building information in analyzed, more condensed key points. It currently has $20 billion of projects running through its website.
Plan0 is unique among AI-driven construction companies in that it uses historical and real-time data to improve upon the model. This both cuts back processing time and helps improve overall analysis and client next steps.