The real estate division of the world’s largest fund manager is working on adding an artificial intelligence member to its investment committee as the property sector increasingly embraces AI tools to help it make decisions on how and where to deploy capital.
BlackRock is in the process of finalising the AI tool and new board member, Global co-Head of Real Estate Paul Tebbit said at Bisnow’s London Real Estate Leadership: 2025 Forecast last week.
In real estate, an investment committee typically assesses deals that investment teams across a company have originated and decides whether to progress with them.
Bisnow/Mike Phillips
Herbert Smith Freehills’ Richard Forsdyke, British Land’s Simon Carter, JLL’s Stephanie Hyde, BlackRock’s Paul Tebbit and Quadrant’s Jeremy Lacey
“The standardised form of investment committee papers and the frequency of the sort of risks which come up are often similar on each investment, we believe,” Tebbit said at last week’s event, held at Quadrant and Aimco’s OSMO Battersea office building in south-west London.
“The type of questions and the dispassionate nature of AI could be a useful kind of almost sounding board for other investment committee members, seeing what it would come up with independently.”
The fact that large language model AI tools can analyse and process large amounts of information means they might spot patterns in previous deals, Tebbit said, adding that any use of AI would only be as a tool for existing investment committee members.
“It could only be a foil and a sounding board, just to see what other views could come up, or the things which you could miss, which it’s been able to notice and identify from previous investments,” he said.
In December, Mubadala Investment Company, one of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds, said it too would have an AI investment committee member as a consultant, The National reported.
“Starting in January 1, I’ve given that deadline, our first investment committee in the new year will have an AI member with us,” Mubadala CEO and Managing Director Khaldoon Al Mubarak reportedly said at the Milken Institute Middle East and Africa Summit held in Abu Dhabi.
“Not in decision-making for the time being, but a consultative co-pilot that has the Mubadala DNA we’ve been developing over the last year, that is able to support our decision-making in terms of due diligence, analysis and assessment, and a perspective on every decision we’re going to make.”
Other real estate firms are finding other ways to put AI to work for investments and capital deployment.
JLL launched its own bespoke in-house generative AI tool, JLL GPT, in summer 2023. The brokerage is now using it to predict which investors might be interested in buying certain buildings and what assets investors should be targeting based on their requirements.
“It’s good, and it’s getting better,” JLL UK CEO Stephanie Hyde told the Bisnow event.
“When you talk to clients, you say, ‘What about these ones?’ And they then say, ‘Oh, how have you been talking to someone? We’re actually looking at two out of those five already, and what about the other three?’ We’ve also been using it to model and look at areas that people should be investing in for development as well, which is quite exciting.”