Patrizia Immobilien, Evana, Allianz Real Estate, Altus Group, Peakside Capital, Brickblock, Union Investment, German Tech Entrepreneurship Center, Drooms, Cloudscraper Exchange, JLL, ValuD

Patrizia Immobilien has acquired an interest in an artificial intelligence (AI) business.

The German real estate fund manager is taking a strategic stake in Evana as it looks to “digitalise” its €40bn portfolio.

Evana, which specialises in data exchange using AI, has raised several million euros from Patrizia and other investors in a round of financing.

Allianz Real Estate has selected software provider Altus Group to provide an investment and asset management platform that can aggregate all of its investments, structures and assets.

Altus said the partnership would enable real-time analytics, decision-making and reporting across the German insurer’s real estate activities.

Andreas Steimel, COO of Allianz Real Estate, said: “Our strategic partnership with Altus Group has resulted in the first of its kind innovation for the real estate industry.

“Their solution provides us with the ability to manage our global portfolio from a single, integrated software platform.

“We benefit from greater visibility and insights from a top view of investments down to the individual asset performance.”

Peakside Capital and Brickblock have teamed up to offer what they say is the world’s first “tokenised” real estate fund.

The blockchain technology used will allow capital to be raised from a global investor pool more cheaply and efficiently than traditional methods.

Stefan Aumann, founding partner of Peakside Capital, said: “Blockchain-based solutions, such as those provided by Brickblock, will transform the real estate sector as they increase the ease of access for different classes of investors and transparency in global real estate markets.

“This strategic partnership marks a turning point in real estate investment management, as it will be the one of the first democratised investment products.”

German fund manager Union Investment and the German Tech Entrepreneurship Center have launched the PropTech Innovation Award 2019, inviting international start-ups to vie for the €40,000 prize money.

Jens Wilhelm, member of the executive board and CIO of Union Asset Management Holding, said: “The third iteration of the competition will reveal which of the many digital trends – from blockchain and the Internet of Things to big data – has the greatest potential to become a game changer in the property sector.” 

Drooms, a data room provider that serves the real estate market, has implemented blockchain technology.

The company said the technology would provide greater protection to its virtual data room offering and had rendered traditional data carriers as “obsolete”.

Cloudscraper Exchange, which claims to be the world’s first fully integrated institutional trading platform for buying, selling and financing real estate assets, has appointed Adrian Levy to the Cloudscraper UK Advisory Board.

Levy, who is a partner and global co-head of real estate sector at law firm Clifford Chance, will advise Cloudscraper on matters that directly affect how market participants interact with legal advisers.

Real estate consultancy JLL is to acquire ValuD Consulting, a provide of IBM software integration and consulting services in the US and India.

Traci Doane, president of JLL Technology Solutions, said: “Joining forces with ValuD gives us the exciting opportunity to expand our expertise in IBM digital solutions and more fully explore emerging technologies that include artificial intelligence, cognitive buildings and predictive analytics.”