Through our Reinventing Industry series, TechNexus Venture Collaborative is highlighting key ventures transforming industries across Chicago. This time, we explore Construction & PropTech—a sector spanning smart building management, digital planning tools, property marketplaces, and AI-driven tenant screening solutions. A more niche category in terms of local ventures, Chicago is home to over 30 early-stage ventures that have raised over $60 million in cumulative funding operating in the space of construction, real estate, and proptech.
The Evolution of Construction & PropTech
The real estate and construction industries are notoriously slow-moving when it comes to tech adoption. In 2023, Mckinsey rated construction as the second-least digitized sector in the world (see graphic above).
However, rising labor costs, increasing urban density, and sustainability demands have driven significant investment in digitization, automation, and data-driven decision-making. From AI-powered risk assessment tools to construction material marketplaces to advanced property management platforms, startups are tackling inefficiencies in a legacy industry long dependent on manual processes.
Clayco, The Walsh Group, Caterpillar, and JLL are a handful of large corporations that call Chicago home - setting the stage for a rich pipeline of potential enterprise customers for local startups disrupting this space.
Areas TechNexus is Excited About
- Digital Master Planning: As one of the least digitized industries in the world, there are several pain points on the value chain that can be vastly improved to improve efficiency and communication across stakeholders like contractors, architects, home owners, and builders alike.
- Digibilt ($5 million round): Builds digital twins of homes pre-construction, creating a better, more predictable outcome for home builders & developers.
- Parafin AI (Undisclosed round): AI-powered generative design platform to build site plans and assess development opportunities integrated with development budgets and investment models.
- Property Management: Digitally enabled maintenance requests, building access, tenant onboarding/communication, and rent collection tools represent several areas ripe for digitization across the property management landscape.
- Propify (Unknown funding): Offers a property management solution tailored specifically to single family rental homes
- Cohesion: ($6 million round): Has built a fully integrated smart building solution offering real time monitoring, digital building access and permissions, and intra-building communication tools
- Tenant Screening: One of the most critical tasks of property owners is accurate and diligent screening of prospective tenants. This is necessary to ensure that the environment is safe for all residents, and that the property investment is protected with dependable income streams.
- Megalytics ($1 million round): Provides proprietary, AI-powered tenant risk assessments for commercial real estate
- Rent Application (Unknown funding): Convenient, customizable rental application platform for tenants to create templates and easily share data across stakeholders
- Rent Butter ($3 million round): Analyzes 100+ financial indicators for applicants including stability, spending patterns, and other financial responsibility metrics to create a comprehensive picture of prospective tenants
What companies / verticals are we missing? Let us know at joey@technexus.com