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Institutional investing
Rebuilding the investment process for the age of AI
A global real estate investment firm brings Smart Bricks into its underwriting, connecting its own models, investment criteria and market intelligence in one AI-native investment system.
Smart Bricks
Contents
Problem
Institutional real estate investing runs on judgement. The evidence behind that judgement sits across offering memorandums, data rooms, Excel models, market reports and years of investment committee papers.
Situation
Every new opportunity meant analysts rebuilding the picture by hand, and as deal flow grew, keeping the same depth across teams, asset classes and geographies got harder.
Resolution
Smart Bricks built an intelligence layer around the process the firm already runs. Its proprietary models, templates, past deals and investment committee materials became its private Company Brain. Specialised agents then work each opportunity through the firm’s own framework: market fundamentals, cash flows, comparable transactions, financing, downside scenarios and exit assumptions.
The first page of the IC memo the agents draft
Coenties Place, Manhattan
Investment committee memo for Fund IV. Multifamily acquisition, 240 apartments.
Recommendation to IC
Proceed to IC
Going-in yield of 5.2% stabilising to 6.0%, an 11.8% five-year levered IRR and a 1.7x equity multiple on a $182m acquisition. The downside case (rents 5% lower, exit yield 50bps wider) holds a 5.4% IRR.
- Acquisition price
- $182m
- Going-in yield
- 5.2%
- 5-year levered IRR
- 11.8%
- Equity multiple
- 1.7x
- Downside IRR
- 5.4%
- Flagged for review
- 6 of 28assumptions
Platform view, sample data.
Impact
The change is bigger than faster underwriting. Analysts investigate an opportunity instead of assembling it, every assumption stays traceable to its source, and people keep the final decision. Each deal is judged through the same institutional framework, and each one leaves the next better informed. The investment process becomes software, and the firm’s intelligence becomes an asset that compounds.
About Smart Bricks
Smart Bricks is an applied AI lab building the intelligence layer for real estate. Operating globally across Dubai, London and San Francisco, it pairs proprietary AI infrastructure with capital-markets expertise, so every investment decision is underwritten on live data and can be traced to its sources. Smart Bricks is an a16z speedrun company.
