Category: Blog

Corporate real estate management, encompassing the oversight of an enterprise’s physical locations worldwide, is undergoing a major shift. The pressure to manage real estate portfolios and workplaces in a more agile and cost-effective manner, without sacrificing user experience, is driving this change. Ever since the outbreak of COVID-19, leaders in the sector face the challenge of balancing these opposing demands, as offices are pressured more than ever to become centers of value creation, supporting growth, revenue, and talent acquisition. Technology plays a critical role in enabling this new paradigm.

For decades, data centers quietly powered the digital world behind the scenes. That era is over. As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms industries and infrastructure, these once-hidden facilities are becoming central to the conversation. In 2025, the focus is no longer on simply expanding data centers but on reimagining them from the ground up.

Continuing our JLL Spark investor series, Principal Ajey Kaushal shares his insights on CRE-focused venture capital – what he looks for in a startup and why an investment from JLL Spark brings unique value to a PropTech startup. Ajey brings a wealth of knowledge and humor to his investments and board roles which include qbiq, Sertis, Ren Systems, Re-Leased, and ALICE Technologies.

qbiq Co-founder and CEO Leeor Solnik shares his company’s journey from ideation to industry disruptor. With its partnership with JLL Spark, qbiq is fast becoming an industry standard for real estate deals.

Property management, the oversight and administration of real estate assets, is undergoing a profound transformation driven by technological advancements. This shift is not only improving operational efficiency but also enhancing the experience for all stakeholders involved in the real estate ecosystem.

Erlinda Arriola is a Senior Investment Associate at JLL Spark Global Ventures and the newest member of the Spark investor team. With her extensive and diverse background as a VC investor, we sat down with Erlinda to gather her views on the PropTech landscape. 

If you read our 2025 predictions you’ll know that we remain bullish on PropTech and are forecasting that a number of themes such as sustainability, the growth of AI and general deployment of capital against tech-led solutions will all flourish this year. Those themes will drag along significant investment in areas such as data centers, energy solutions, and carbon metrics as a result. 

Welcome 2025! In the spirit of forecasting (or manifesting) what the new year will bring, the JLL Spark team compiled their predictions on CRE themes for the year ahead. The top trends identified were sustainability, data center growth, a rebound in the CRE landscape, and – last, but not least – AI. Many of our predictions in 2024 came to fruition, such as the fed rate cut, spotlight on sustainability, a push for the return to office, to name a few. Will the same ring true for this year? Only time will tell…

AI may be overhyped at the moment, but we can confidently say that the direction is clear: Demand for AI-driven solutions in real estate is rising. 

According to JLL’s Future of Work 2024 survey, 90.1% of companies plan to run their corporate real estate function with AI and technology supporting human experts. Though understanding of the technology remains low, adoption is gaining momentum, with 61% of companies already piloting different CRE AI use cases.

Commercial real estate investors and occupiers are actively embracing AI, with 90% of companies planning to integrate AI over the next five years to help navigate the complexities of an ever-changing market landscape, according to JLL’s 2024 Future of Work Survey. By harnessing the power of Generative AI, the latest wave of artificial intelligence techniques, these stakeholders can process vast amounts of information quickly, uncovering insights that would be impossible to glean through traditional methods.