Israeli startup Skyline AI has raised $3 million from Sequoia Capital in its seed financing round. The company has developed a real estate forecasting platform in the hope of changing the commercial real estate market from a field based on assumptions and appraisals to one based on precise information.
"The investment will be spent mostly on development and expanding activity in the US. We're aiming at the US market because we have mapped the properties there, and that's where our expertise is," Skyline AI cofounder and CEO Guy Zipori told "Globes." Zipori added that the company had developed technology for real estate investments based on artificial intelligence (AI). The technology continuously analyzes over 130 sources of information. Based on these data, it forecasts risk, return, and future value of every property in the US for investment institutions and funds operating in commercial real estate in the US.
Skyline AI has cooperated with these real estate concerns in developing the product. Zipori says that the company is currently closing its first deals with a number of customers. "We are getting connected to major US investment concerns, and are letting them analyze specific deals of interest to them on the platform. In exchange, we get the right to participate in the deal with them, assuming that we want to be involved," he said in explaining the company's business model.
"The platform is reminiscent of Google Maps. Next to every property on the map you can see information about the property and a forecast of what will happen to it in the coming years. We have over 10,000 data points for every property, which we use to make our predictions. We also gather real estate information and other information likely to affect real estate prices, such as demography, education, and crime.
"We have one group of graduates of the 8200 IDF intelligence unit, and this is their job. For example, we use satellite photos to derive data about the pace of development in a given neighborhood. This information does not exist in raw form, so we produce it by ourselves. Afterwards, with a team of data scientists, we issue a forecast for the value of properties in the US, and what their value will be in the coming years. We use mainly deep neural networks for this purpose," Zipori explains. This is an artificial intelligence model that processes large quantities of information and produces forecasts in a way designed to imitate the activity of the human brain's neural network. In this case, the model imitates an experienced real estate agent able to appraise the value of a property accurately and intuitively.
Behind Skyline AI stands a team of serial entrepreneurs: Zipori, Or Hiltch (CTO), Iri Amirav (CRO), and Amir Leitersdorf (chairperson). They have been working together since 2007, and have already sold three companies, including two at one time. StreamRail, which was sold to ironSource, offered an AI-based video solution; Visionize was sold to anti-virus company AVG; and Movota was sold to the Bertelsmann corporation. "What all these companies had in common was that they all dealt in big data and AI in different spheres, such as health and security. Today, we're bringing these capabilities to real estate. This is a huge market with an annual turnover in the trillions, but it hasn't kept up with the pace of technological development in recent decades," Zipori declares.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on March 22, 2018
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