Bridge Investment Group Holdings Inc., a real estate investment manager with approximately $38.8 billion of assets under its management, today announced launching Bridge Ventures, according to a press release. It also hired Jeremy Ford as the chief investment officer of Bridge Ventures.
“We are excited to have Jeremy Ford join Bridge as Chief Investment Officer of Bridge Ventures,” says Robert Morse, executive chairman of Bridge. “His 17-year tenure in the real estate industry brings valuable experience and leadership to the Bridge Ventures team as the Company expands into the PropTech world.”
Ford was the head of Property Strategy at REEF Technology before joining Bridge. He has also held positions at BLG Capital Limited as its chief investment officer and The Carlyle Group as managing director and head of Europe, metropolitan real estate.
The statement says while the real estate industry has adopted technology-based services in a post-pandemic setting, investments in the sector are still not at par with other industries like finance, health and education.
Bridge is now expanding into the proptech market by focusing on early and later stage proptech companies and investing in proptech funds. Proptech adoption continues to grow in the U.S., including solutions for ecommerce, remote work setting, creating an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) space in real estate and digitizing the field to keep up with market demands.
“We see tremendous opportunities to deploy and scale new technologies through direct utilization in the Bridge portfolio, which we anticipate will serve as a catalyst for market adoption and value creation,” Ford explained in the release.
In other proptech news, NewPoint launched NewPoint Impact, an affordable housing platform. Thirty Capital also launched The Academy of CRE Finance & Innovation and is accepting applications August 15.