Every satisfying wave of technology adoption follows a pattern: first the infrastructure, then the platforms, then the applications that transform how work actually gets done. In commercial real estate and the built world, we're in the thick of that transformation. A new generation of seed-stage companies is applying AI not to digitize old workflows but to replace them entirely—turning months of pre-construction planning into days, automating engineering drawings, and collapsing due diligence timelines from weeks to hours.
What's striking about this cohort isn't just the technology. It's the capital behind it. Seed rounds in built-world AI now routinely clear $5–10 million, with firms like Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ, Fifth Wall, and Ribbit Capital leading at the earliest stage. The signal is clear: institutional investors believe the built world is the next frontier for AI-native companies.
Here are 10 seed-stage AI companies reshaping real estate, construction, and infrastructure in 2025.
Institutional Real Estate
Build — $8.5M Seed
Build is the AI-native operating partner for institutional real estate. Where most proptech companies offer point solutions—a better CRM, a faster comp tool—Build delivers end-to-end development services powered by agentic AI across eight stages: site selection, zoning and entitlements, due diligence, market research, acquisitions and financing, design and engineering, asset management, and exit.
Its AI assistant, Dougie, executes complex CRE workflows via email and chat, producing fully vetted development documents up to 90% faster than traditional consultants. Every deliverable passes through expert human QA before reaching the client. The model is fixed per-deliverable pricing—not hourly billing—which aligns incentives around speed and quality.
Investors: Undisclosed.
Why it matters: Build's thesis is that institutional real estate doesn't need more software. It needs an AI-native operating partner that can execute—site memos, zoning reports, financial models, market analyses—at the speed capital demands. The company operates from San Francisco, Brooklyn, and London.
Grotto AI — $10M Seed
Grotto AI builds AI that supercharges multifamily leasing teams rather than replacing them. The platform analyzes leasing conversations to identify what drives conversions, delivers real-time guidance during calls and tours, and provides post-call coaching. The "human-first" approach bets that in housing, the human relationship still closes the deal—AI just makes the human better.
Investors: Led by ICONIQ, with Asymmetric Capital Partners. Angel investors include David Dear (BILT), Caren Maio (Funnel Leasing), and Avi Dorfman (Compass co-founder).
Why it matters: ICONIQ leading a seed round is rare—the firm just co-led Anthropic's $30B Series G. Their bet on Grotto signals conviction that AI-augmented leasing is a category-defining opportunity in multifamily.
Henry AI — $4.3M Seed
Henry AI automates deal deck creation and marketing materials for commercial real estate brokers. Analysts at top brokerages were spending 50% of their time building presentations from comps and notes. Henry turns that into a polished, deal-ready deck in minutes.
Investors: Co-led by Susa Ventures and 1Sharpe Ventures, with RXR. Y Combinator S24.
Why it matters: Already used by five of the top 10 national CRE brokerages. It's a clear example of AI eliminating the grunt work that slows deal velocity—exactly where automation compounds.
Smart Bricks — $5M Pre-Seed
Smart Bricks is building an AI infrastructure layer for global real estate investing. Its autonomous reasoning systems compress a 3–6 month investment evaluation into minutes using automated valuation models, cash-flow forecasting, and downside risk modeling. The UAE-based company targets cross-border investors who need to evaluate properties in unfamiliar markets at speed.
Investors: Led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z Speedrun), with South Loop Ventures, Cornerstone VC, and Techstars. Angels from OpenAI, Airbnb, Anthropic, Blackstone, and DeepMind.
Why it matters: The angel investor list reads like a who's who of AI and real estate. a16z's Speedrun program backing a proptech pre-seed signals the firm's growing conviction in physical-world AI.
Construction & Pre-Construction
Endra — $20M Seed
Endra automates MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) design for commercial buildings—a process that traditionally takes two months of specialized engineering work. Endra's AI compresses it to less than a day. With 600+ companies on the waitlist from 90+ countries and only 10 employees, the Stockholm-based company has one of the highest demand-to-team ratios in construction tech.
Investors: Led by Notion Capital with Norrsken VC.
Why it matters: MEP design is the bottleneck that delays virtually every commercial construction project. Endra's $20M seed—one of the largest in European construction tech—reflects how much latent demand exists for automating this critical but overlooked workflow.
Spacial — $10M Seed
Spacial automates residential engineering and building permits. It converts 2D architectural drawings into 3D code-compliant structural and MEP plans, detects conflicts, and validates against local building codes. The platform has processed 140+ active projects and grown revenue 300% since its 2024 launch.
Investors: Led by TLV Partners, with Mango Capital, Re Angels, and HTV.
Why it matters: The permitting bottleneck adds an average of 27 weeks and $30,000 per residential project in the U.S. Spacial attacks this directly. As the housing affordability crisis deepens, anything that accelerates the path from design to permit has outsized impact.
LightTable — $6M Seed
LightTable uses AI to review pre-construction design documents—processing thousands of pages of architectural plans and engineering specs and delivering coordinated reviews in 10–45 minutes. The traditional process takes 3–6 weeks of manual review by multiple specialists. In pilots, LightTable found 4x more issues than traditional peer reviews and reduced on-site coordination mistakes by 70%.
Investors: Led by Primary Venture Partners, with Innovation Endeavors and MetaProp.
Why it matters: Design errors caught during construction are 10–100x more expensive to fix than errors caught during review. LightTable's AI flips the economics of quality assurance in construction.
Energy & Infrastructure
Tibo Energy — $6.5M Seed
Tibo Energy builds AI-driven energy management for commercial and industrial buildings. Its drag-and-drop Energy System Simulator lets operators model building energy systems, while its real-time AI optimization engine, Alice, updates control schedules every five minutes. The platform is deployed across 30+ industrial sites and expanding into Germany and Belgium.
Investors: Led by KOMPAS VC, with Hitachi Ventures, WEPA Ventures, SET Ventures, and Speedinvest.
Why it matters: As buildings become energy producers—with rooftop solar, battery storage, and EV charging—managing decentralized energy systems becomes a critical AI problem. Tibo sits at the intersection of the energy transition and commercial real estate operations.
Consumer Real Estate
Ridley — $6.4M Seed
Ridley is rebuilding real estate transactions around the consumer using AI. Its platform enables commission-free homebuying and selling with predictive analytics and autonomous AI guidance replacing the traditional agent model. Since launching in July 2025, Ridley has generated $4.6 billion in lead volume, sold 57 homes with a 33-day average time on market, and achieved a 98.3% list-to-sold price ratio.
Investors: Led by Fifth Wall, with 1984 Ventures, 1Sharpe Ventures, Moxxie Ventures, and Aglae Ventures. Angels from Stripe and Google.
Why it matters: Americans pay roughly $100 billion per year in real estate commissions. Post-NAR settlement, the market is ripe for AI-native alternatives. Ridley's early traction suggests consumers are ready.
What These Companies Have in Common
Despite spanning different subsectors—from MEP design to multifamily leasing to energy management—these 10 companies share a few traits worth noting.
They replace workflows, not just tools. None of these companies digitize an existing manual process. They eliminate it. Endra doesn't help engineers design MEP systems faster—it designs them. Build doesn't help analysts write site memos—it writes them. This is the difference between proptech 1.0 (SaaS for real estate) and the current wave (AI that does the work).
They attract non-traditional proptech investors. ICONIQ, a16z, Ribbit Capital, Innovation Endeavors—these aren't real estate VCs. They're generalist and fintech investors who see the built world as the next domain where AI creates category-defining companies. When Anthropic's co-investor leads a multifamily leasing seed round, it's a signal.
They monetize outcomes, not seats. Several companies on this list price by deliverable, transaction, or project rather than per-seat SaaS. That's a structural advantage in an industry where the end customer cares about the memo, the permit, or the deal—not the software license.
They're global from day one. Smart Bricks (UAE), Endra (Sweden), Tibo Energy (Netherlands), Spacial (Israel)—the built world is inherently local, but the AI layer is global. These companies are building for cross-border deployment from the start.
The Bottom Line
The built world is the largest asset class on earth—over $300 trillion in real estate alone. Yet it remains one of the least digitized industries. That gap is closing fast, and the companies closing it aren't legacy proptech platforms bolting on AI features. They're AI-native companies built from scratch to execute the work that real estate, construction, and infrastructure professionals do every day.
The seed stage is where the next wave of built-world companies gets defined. These 10 are worth watching.