Where top VCs are investing in real estate and proptech (Part 1 of 2)

The multi-trillion dollar global real estate market is getting flipped on its head. Business model innovation, data accessibility and the proliferation of mobile, SaaS and other cloud-native software have already given rise to a cohort of tech unicorns that sit amongst the world’s most influential real estate companies. Emerging technologies and growing capabilities across machine learning, 5G, IoT and more coupled with fast-moving regulations and dramatic cost structure changes have opened up opportunities for the next wave of innovation across a wide set of multi-billion dollar real estate verticals and sub-verticals. And despite WeWork’s implosion garnering countless headlines in the real estate and technology worlds, venture dollars are continuing to spill into real estate tech (or proptech) companies at a rapidly increasing rate. Just upwards of $16 billion in venture capital has flowed into real estate-related startups in 2019 alone, according to data from Crunchbase and Pitchbook, with major fundraises happening across industrial, commercial, residential, and financial categories.