Curated daily by our industry experts. Stay informed on how tech is shaping the real estate industry with these important headlines.
FUTURISM
We may not have to wait much longer to jump in a taxi without a human driver. According to Bloomberg, Waymo is about to unveil the world’s first driverless ride-hailing service as soon as next month. Waymo has yet to officially announce a new name for the project.
BISNOW
Knotel co-founder Amol Sarva is no stranger to bold statements, nor is he shy about his competition with WeWork. In an interview with Commercial Observer, Sarva said flexible workspace provider Knotel “will be bigger than [WeWork] in the next 15 months,” citing his company’s rapid growth, and the fact that Knotel already has a third of WeWork’s footprint in New York, spread among more properties.
JLL REAL VIEWS
Sales on Singles Day – like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, but bigger – in China soared to a record US$30.8 billion, topping last year’s total by 27 percent. However, year-on-year, this marked the slowest growth in the 10-year history, a confident signal to retail landlords that have been facing challenges from the rise of e-commerce, says Paige Chuang, senior manager in JLL China’s retail leasing team….
MICHAEL BECKERMAN
John Helm is a good friend of mine. If you have met him, you can understand why (with all due respect to John) you might not have heard of him. He is humble, low key, and modest. But don’t let that calm and understated exterior fool you. John is wicked smart, incredibly connected in the tech world, hugely accomplished and surrounded by very bright, exceptional people. Few people are as wired in the multifamily tech world as John, and now that he has over $100m in his war chest and the Multif…
BUSINESS WIRE
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Hippo, the California-based insurtech company that is transforming home insurance, today announced a $70 million round of growth funding co-led by Felicis Ventures, a venture firm investing in the iconic companies of today and tomorrow, and Lennar Corporation, the nation’s leading homebuilder. All major existing investors also participated in the round of funding. Hippo will utilize the funding to accelerate growth while continuing to deliver a modernized …
NY TIMES
WeWork, the co-working office company, has expanded rapidly over its eight-year life span, thanks in part to huge investments from SoftBank of Japan. On Tuesday, it secured another big cash infusion from its largest investor.
THE REAL DEAL
The 11-story Beaux-Arts building at 88 University Place in Greenwich Village is the kind of property every co-working company dreams of occupying. Sitting just south of Union Square and partly owned by fashion designer Elie Tahari and WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann, it has small floor plates that can be easily turned into cozy, communal work stations, and the nearby NYU campus promises a steady supply of young, well-heeled freelancers and aspiring entrepreneurs….
NY TIMES
Real estate titans have long scoffed at WeWork, which in eight short years has managed to attain a $20 billion valuation by selling short-term leases for shared office space with a mixture of stylish design and free-flowing alcohol. Derided by some as a real estate company masquerading as a technology company, it has been called everything from a “$20 billion house of cards” to a “Ponzi scheme.”…
LEVERTON
According to Gartner, the global business value derived from artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to total $1.2 trillion in 2018, an increase of 70% from 2017.[1] The impact of AI across various industries has caused the world to change. From self-driving cars, home gadgets, to optimization of processes and automation, in a very short time AI has enabled to rethink how to solve world’s largest problems….
WSJ
The first three industrial revolutions were driven by coal and steam, then electricity and the automobile, then computing. Now we may be witnessing the rise of the fourth: an economy powered by the mobile internet, automation and artificial intelligence. That was the assessment of Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, who made the fourth industrial revolution the theme of his annual meeting in 2016.
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