An $866M fund aimed at investment in proptech closed late last week, marking the fast-growing segment’s largest commitment to date.
Raised by venture capital firm Fifth Wall, the fund will include two vehicles backing both early and late-stage real estate technology companies, according to a news release. Fifth Wall has raised more than $1B for the segment, known colloquially as proptech, over the past year.
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Upon its launch in 2016, Fifth Wall was one of the first venture capital firms to throw its weight behind the emerging proptech sector. It has been working since then to attract capital by raising proptech’s profile, co-founder and Managing Partner Brendan Wallace said in a statement.
“It’s the natural next step that we’d expand the aperture, deploying two vehicles that enable us to invest from seed to IPO,” he said. “It signifies our commitment to the ecosystem as it navigates the next wave.”
Investors in Fifth Wall Fund III include Annaly Capital Management, Arbor Realty Trust, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Koch Real Estate Investments, Hines, Invitation Homes and Physicians Realty Trust, per the release.
Proptech saw massive growth in 2022, even as the tech industry reckoned with higher borrowing costs, falling stock prices, a wave of layoffs and reluctant investor activity.
More than $8B in growth equity and debt funding occurred during the first half of this year, per the release, and multiple large-scale M&A transactions also took place, including Altus Group’s $28.8M acquisition of Rethink Solutions, a Canada-based property tax management software developer.
Fifth Wall, which has more than 110 limited partners, has about $3.2B in capital under management, per the release. Earlier this year, the firm closed on a $500M Climate Fund aimed at decarbonizing the global real estate industry through proptech.
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