TestFit Inc., an AI-powered real estate development planning proptech, today announced raising a $20 million Series A led by Parkway Venture Capital, according to a press release.
The organization says it will use the funds to scale its product and engineering teams in order to meet opportunity and demand in the multifamily and light industrial property segments. It cited growing rental demand and online shopping-fueled warehouse growth as evidence for these scaling efforts.
“This new funding will enable us to quadruple down on our product and engineering teams—there is so much opportunity in the market, and we want to be there to create even more value for our customers,” stated Clifton Harness, TestFit co-founder and CEO, in the release.
TestFit says its unified enterprise platform, which utilizes construction cost planning and asset design for commodity real estate developers, is made possible by the integration of property management, construction tech and design tech into a single building configuration software.
It says this AI-powered approach reduces risks in decision making and creates “critical time-savings when developing new commodity real estate.” The company says this is a crucial time to scale its tech offering, citing data from CBRE that suggests a rise in multifamily occupancies.
That report found that despite 300,000 multifamily units planned for delivery in 2022, country-wide supply will still fall 200,000 units short of demand due to rising rental activity. It also found multifamily occupancy levels will remain above 95% in the near future, with net effective rents expected to grow by 7% in 2023.
Gregg Hill, co-founder and managing partner at Parkway VC, says he believes TestFit will help lead transformation in the real estate industry and that its AI-powered technology will help “kill bad real estate deals.” As a result of the funding, Hill will join TestFit’s board of directors.
“The AI-powered building configurator provides a unique interaction experience, enabling instantaneous control of feasibility studies and pro forma plans,” Hill noted in the release.
Warehouse space demands are also predicted to rise over 300 million square feet per year in the upcoming years, accentuating TestFit’s plans to scale its technology. The company also made recent moves to add visual assets and other commercial services to its offering, integrating with real-time visualization software Enscape to improve tours of apartments, offices and hotels.
In other proptech news, SmartRent appointed SightPlan CEO Terry Danner as the Executive Vice President of Sales following its recent $135 million all-cash merger acquisition. Foresite Technology Solutions also announced partnering with Lilt to integrate multilingual content into its platform.