Knotel Signs 20K SF in Two Garment District Deals

Knotel signed two leases for a total of 19,974 square feet on Eighth Avenue in the Garment District, Commercial Observer has learned. The flex office company inked a five-year deal for an 11,400-square-foot lease at East End Capital’s 580 Eighth Avenue, where they’ll occupy the 15th, 16th and 18th floors of the 21-story building.

Driverless trucks ride at night with TuSimple’s improved camera system

In its quest to roll out the country’s first commercialized fleet of autonomous trucks, TuSimple has added an improved camera and vision system that lets its vehicles operate at night and in low-light situations. Currently, TuSimple can run its trucks for an average of 12 hours per day, or 50 percent usage, but this new system can push that up to an average utilization of 80 percent. It’s not difficult to do the math on how much more ground each vehicle can cover with what is essentially night v…

Real Estate Tech Company Blueground Raises $20 Million

Blueground, a real estate technology company, announced it raised $20 million in funding from a group of investors including New York City-based entrepreneur Kevin Ryan — who is joining the company’s board of directors. Ryan is known for launching several successful businesses including Business Insider, MongoDB, Gilt Groupe, and Zola.com. And Ryan also served as CEO of DoubleClick before Google bought the company for $3.1 billion in 2007.

Outside agents notch a victory over Opendoor. But it may be short-lived.

Over the last decade, agents have been squeezed by the proliferation of online listings portals and automated valuation models. Now, with well-funded “iBuyers” poised to tighten the screws and reduce the agents’ role in the homebuying process, some brokers are fighting back against automation. Speaking at a Silicon Valley conference called Startup Grind, Opendoor CEO Eric Wu revealed that the iBuying company had removed the “Buy It Now” button from its website and app, following complaints fr…

WeWork’s Tech Acquisitions Show The Rise Of The Surveillance Workplace

The We Company’s gambit to become a tech company rather than a real estate company comes with the same modern privacy concerns that dog the tech giants. Through its acquisitions of startups such as Teem and Euclid, WeWork’s umbrella company has built a platform of workplace tracking technology that breaks down the movement of office workers to the most granular levels, Bloomberg reports. Though Teem and Euclid’s features are still in the testing phase at WeWork offices, they will soon join a …

Backing China’s Big Bet on Smart Cities

China’s largest insurer is backing the nation’s ambitious smart city program with investment in technology, panelists said during the ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium, held in Shenzhen, China. Wei Baisong, chief technical officer and chief product officer at Ping An Capital, the venture arm of one of China’s largest insurance companies, said China has plans for 500 smart cities, compared with about 80 in Europe and 40 in the United States. China has one-third of the world’s cities wit…

Truss Expands Its Technology-Based Office Space Matching System to Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA, PA—Truss, a Chicago-based marketplace for commercial real estate listings, is expanding its platform into the Philadelphia market with information about more than 400 available office spaces and 20 coworking locations in downtown Philadelphia.  The expansion follows Truss’ latest Series A-2 funding round of $15 million. Truss now has more than 300 million square feet of available office, retail and industrial space available to search, tour and lease on its platform. …

Revisiting the Open-Office Revolution with Top Tech Employers

The conversion to primarily open-office floor plans over the past decade is now reaching adolescence, and like many revolutions has created problems as well as possibilities, panelists said at a ULI New York event in February. Industry experts from three tech companies that want to attract the best talent available described what they are seeing in the marketplace based on their considerable and far-flung office experiences. Tom Vecchione, principal and design director at Gensler, cited a rec…

Neiman Marcus dazzles with technology, services at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards

Neiman Marcus is making a big bet on the Big Apple with the opening of its first-ever store in Manhattan, on Friday, March 15. The luxury retailer will anchor The Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards — the expansive new complex on Manhattan’s fare West Side that has been called the largest private real estate development in the U.S. by square footage — with a three-story, 188,000-sq.-ft. flagship that promises the latest in “luxury fashion, digital innovation and delectable dining.”…

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