Venture funding to proptech startups is nowhere near its peak and still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, as higher interest rates make real estate a tougher place to invest, leading to fewer deals and raising the bar for startups seeking capital.
But startup investors haven’t abandoned the sector, either, Crunchbase data shows. Instead, they’re being more selective about their bets and putting more money into companies using AI and other technology to make construction, property operations and real estate transactions faster and less expensive.
That shift shows up in both the year’s largest funding rounds and biggest acquisitions — and, notably, much of the biggest funding activity is happening outside the U.S.
The broad trend: Even before the pandemic-fueled funding peaks, proptech startups received more than double the venture funding in 2019 than in more recent years. While investors haven’t given up on proptech, funding to startups in the space remains down as interest rates hover in the 6% to 7% range.
In case you forgot, during the COVID-19 pandemic, home buyers and owners had access to 15-year mortgage interest rates as low as 2.5%. Those historically low interest rates fueled investor interest in the space, especially in the U.S.
Today, venture investors are backing startups working in areas such as AI-driven construction, property operations, underwriting and transaction infrastructure with demonstrable ROI. At the same time, more generic real estate software and later-stage companies without exceptional growth face significant funding challenges, our data shows.
And interestingly, four of the five largest deals in 2026 to date took place outside the United States.
The numbers: So far in 2026, global real estate-related startups have pulled in about $8.7 billion in seed- through growth-stage financing, per Crunchbase data. That compares to $24 billion in 2019, the second-highest year on record after the 2021 venture funding spike. It also compares to $12.3 billion raised in 2025. It appears that with four months left in the year, proptech funding is on pace to roughly match or slightly exceed 2025 levels.
Deal count is also down fairly significantly, with 794 deals so far this year. For context, the space saw more than 2,400 deals in 2019. Last year, the sector notched 1,446 transactions. The lower deal count signals both potentially decreased investor interest in the space and larger round sizes.
Noteworthy deals
The three largest deals in the proptech space so far took place in Europe, and two of those top deals involved companies doing work with steel.
Stockholm-based Stegra, a green steel startup, landed the largest haul in a private equity deal led by Wallenberg Investments, also of Sweden. In June, the 6-year-old company raised about $1.6 billion in a transaction that made Wallenberg its majority owner.
In August, Hydnum Steel of Madrid raised $695 million in a venture round led by another Madrid-based company, Cofides, for its own green steel plant. The 3-year-old startup raised the money at a $3.1 billion valuation.
And in January, Amsterdam-based Mews, a cloud-native hospitality management system, closed a $300 million Series D funding round at a $2.5 billion valuation. London’s EQT Growth led the financing for the 14-year-old company.
The only U.S. company to crack the top five when it comes to the largest deals was San Francisco-based autonomous construction tech startup Bedrock Robotics, which raised $270 million in a Series B funding round in February. The financing, co-led by Valor Atreides AI Fund and CapitalG, brought Bedrock’s total funding to over $350 million and valued the company at $1.75 billion.
Montreal-based AI-powered digital mortgage startup Nesto rounds out the list with a $216 million Series E raised in June at a $1.47 billion valuation.
Exits
There have been some meaningful proptech exits in 2026, although the activity is much stronger in M&A than in IPOs.
The only known significant initial public offering in the space was conducted in January by Columbia, Missouri-based EquipmentShare, a construction-equipment rental company with a jobsite technology platform. EquipmentShare raised about $747 million in primary proceeds by pricing 30.5 million shares at $24.50. Including shares sold by existing holders, the offering totaled approximately $859 million.
Real estate-related startup M&A, however, has been robust in 2026 so far, with several of the largest transactions involving brokerage consolidation. Overall, the broad acquisition trend is centered around incumbents buying data, workflow ownership and distribution so they can build credible AI products more quickly.
The largest deal in the proptech space was Autodesk’s $3.6 billion cash purchase of MaintainX, which operated an AI-powered equipment maintenance and asset management platform, announced in May. (MaintainX had seen its valuation jump to $2.5 billion in 2025 after a $150 million Series D raise.)
There were several other large acquisitions.
- In January, Compass completed its acquisition of Anywhere in an all-stock $1.6 billion transaction that made it “the world’s largest brokerage,” according to reports.
- Construction tech giant Procore announced in July that it was acquiring DroneDeploy, a provider of aerial and ground-based reality-capture software for construction and other industries, for $845 million in cash. In a smaller deal, Procore also picked up construction AI-agent platform DataGrid.
- Commercial real estate giant CoStar Group in August completed its $800 million cash purchase of Zonda, a housing-market data and technology provider for the homebuilding industry.
- And also in August, The Real Brokerage officially completed its $880 million acquisition of RE/MAX Holdings, forming a new parent entity named the Real REMAX Group.
The AI effect
AI is starting to move from the testing stage into everyday use across real estate and construction, according to a recent research report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and MetaProp titled “Proptech’s Impact on Real Estate Innovation and Transformation.”
The report says companies are using it to cut costs, make better decisions, and handle routine work more efficiently. Meanwhile, proptech is expanding beyond property-management software into areas such as construction, energy, infrastructure and climate technology.
Overall, proptech funding remains far below its pandemic-era highs, but the types of companies attracting money are evolving. Investors and buyers tend to favor businesses that can show they save customers time or money, particularly in construction, building operations and real estate finance. As such, the proptech sector increasingly includes companies that look quite different from those funded in years past.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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