From Parcel to Platform: How AI is Reshaping Real Estate Investment

Yesterday, I attended the annual USD Real Estate Conference. As with nearly every event I’ve been to this past year, AI was front and center.

While real estate has traditionally been slow to embrace new technology, we’re now seeing AI meaningfully reshape how we invest and operate. One of the benefits of our diversified investment strategy is early exposure to adjacent real estate technologies, allowing us to not only learn but to invest where innovation is happening. That’s a real competitive advantage.

Take our recent investment in Prophetic AI as a case in point. It’s already proving accretive to our acquisitions process, enabling us to surface off-market industrial outdoor storage (IOS) opportunities faster and more intelligently. By aggregating property data and distilling zoning across jurisdictions, Prophetic AI helps us spot patterns in a fragmented, opaque asset class. When we layer our internal analysis on top of Prophetic’s public and proprietary datasets, we can pinpoint underutilized parcels, identify markets with low institutional ownership, and flag value add opportunities well before they hit the market. Pairing a focused investment thesis with the right tools has enabled us to rapidly fill the top of our funnel.

We’re also backing companies like Stuf Storage, which is redefining what underutilized space can become. Partnering with landlords to transform vacant office space, outdoor areas, and more into secure, tech enabled storage facilities, Stuf leverages AI-driven pricing and customer support to maximize the value of each space. This kind of foresight aligns with Westlake’s core philosophy: take great assets and unlock new forms of value. We don’t just see square footage; we see what space can become in a changing world.

As Westlake grows, we’re accomplishing more with the same headcount – leveraging the right tools, platforms, and partnerships to operate smarter and scale more efficiently. At the end of the day, real estate is still a people business. AI helps us invest more in our team by eliminating friction and allowing them to focus on high impact work. Our people remain our greatest differentiator, and with the right technology behind them, their impact only grows.