The Future We Build

The one with.. The AI provocateur. Part 2. Agency and the Architecture of Change - with Antony Slumbers

Antony Slumbers is one of the most consistently provocative thinkers at the intersection of AI and real estate. In this second of a two-part conversation — recorded before the recent stock market turbulence that he references mid-episode — Alex and Antony pick up where they left off and go further: into the future of AI hardware, the geopolitics of energy, the sustainability implications of large language models, and what it will actually take for real estate businesses to transform rather than just tinker. Key Timestamps •      [00:41:00] The exponential efficiency curve —why the cost of a given level of AI intelligence has fallen 10x per year for the last three to four years •      [00:42:00] Right-sizing AI models — why state-of-the-art frontier models are already overkill for most real estate tasks, and what that means for cost •      [00:43:00] The Apple business model for AI — how open source models will converge with on-device computing to shift processing away from data centres •      [00:45:00] Data centre energy and the 3% myth —why the macro figure is less alarming than the localised grid constraints in Virginia and across the US •      [00:47:00] AI optimisation of the built environment — why DeepMind cut Google's data centre energy use by 40%, and why most buildings leave 10–20% on the table •      [00:51:00] Materials science as the next frontier — DeepMind's investment in low-cost sustainable materials and the question of when solar glazing becomes viable at scale •      [00:54:00] Europe's innovation deficit — why high energy prices create demand but regulatory instinct stifles supply, and the poor storytelling around net zero •      [00:58:00] Sustainability as a byproduct of technical buildings — Antony's argument that a fully sensored, efficientbuilding is already most of the way to sustainable •      [00:59:00] Institutional mandates haven't changed — European investors still require sustainable assets, they juststopped saying ESG out loud •      [01:01:00] The hospitality niche — real estate assets designed for digital detox, 'human as the new luxury', and the demand side that might pull sustainable development forward •      [01:04:00] How to eat the sustainability elephant — Antony's argument for ignoring what you can't move and doing what you can within your own patch •      [01:07:00] The competitive threat to incumbents — how well-funded spinouts with domain expertise and AI-first architecture could undercut established firms on margin •      [01:09:00] Alex on building a sustainability duediligence tool in three evenings using Claude Code — and the question of what actually creates defensible value •      [01:11:00] The three components of real AI value — data access, orchestration across systems, and trust; why software is the easiest part •      [01:15:00] Hallucination and the trust problem — why even cited, credible-looking sources can be entirely fabricated, and why domain knowledge is the verification layer •      [01:16:00] The CRE Automation Matrix — Antony'sfour-quadrant framework for deciding which real estate tasks to automate: plumbing vs cognition, easy vs hard to verify •      [01:19:00] Making sustainability economically viable for the whole market — how AI could bring the cost of high-quality analysis down from Blackstone-level to mid-market •      [01:20:00] Closing question: What one thing would Antony want changed? The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly.Filmed at Mute showroom, Great Sutton Street, London. •      LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build [https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build] •      LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds] Antony Slumbers •      LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonyslumbers [https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonyslumbers] •      Website: https://www.antonyslumbers.com [https://www.antonyslumbers.com]

The one with... the AI provocateur. Part 1. The real estate countdown

Antony Slumbers has spent more than two decades at the intersection of real estate and technology — first as a software company founder writing property management systems, then as one of the most widely read voices on AI in the built environment. He runs the Generative AI for Real Estate People course, now on its 50th cohort, and has become a go-to thinker for anyone trying to understand what artificial intelligence actually means for how this industry operates. This episode is the first of a two-part conversation. Part One focuses on the here and now: where AI has already changed the game for real estate professionals, what genuine productivity transformation looks like (not 5% faster — 80% different), and why real estate, despite its slow cycles, has more reason than almost any other sector to pay close attention to technology right now. Key Timestamps•      [00:06:30] Antony's background: 20+ years in PropTech, software businesses, and how he became a leading voice on AI in real estate •      [00:09:00] Why the 'use cases' conversation has become almost meaningless — and how generative AI has outgrown the 'text, code, images' framing •      [00:09:45] André Karpathy's 'kernel of an operating system' idea and what natural language computing actually means in practice •      [00:11:00]  Why cracking Excel changes everything for real estate — and what that means for how analysts actually spend their time •      [00:12:30]  The data problem: why most real estate firms' data is still 'pretty rubbish' and why that has to be fixed before AI can do its work •      [00:13:00]  Inverting the 70/30 ratio: from 70% wrangling models to 70% thinking about inputs and outcomes •      [00:14:30]  Why real estate developers need to pay more attention to technology than almost anyone — the seven-to-ten-year gestation problem •      [00:19:30]  From SaaS dashboards to outcomes-as-a-service: where the market is heading and who is already building for it •      [00:21:00]  The co-pilot obsession in real estate firms — and why locking people into inferior internal tools creates a governance vs capability tension •      [00:22:00] From engineers writing code to engineers managing agents: how Karpathy went from 80% human/20% machine to the reverse •      [00:23:30]  Why JLL, CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield lost 25% of their market cap in two days — and what the market is actually pricing in •      [00:24:00]  The structural shift: from human-plus-software to agents-plus-APIs, and what that means for building management •      [00:26:00] Domain expertise as the killer advantage: why the people getting the most out of AI right now are those who already know what wrong looks like •      [00:27:30] The junior talent paradox: cutting graduate intake may look efficient now but hollows out domain knowledge in a decade •      [00:31:00] Bloom's Two Sigma problem and the prospect of AI as a personal tutor that compresses years of professional development •      [00:35:30] Closing out Part One: the environmental and social paradox of AI that will be the focus of Part Two Organisations Mentioned •      OpenAI •      Anthropic •      Google DeepMind / Google Gemini •      Tesla •      Salesforce •      JLL •      CBRE •      Cushman & Wakefield •      LaSalle Investment Management •      Hines •      CQuel •      2150 •      UK Green Building Council •      Better Buildings Partnership •      McKinsey & Company •      Knight Frank •      NREP •      GREEN •      Google (NotebookLM) •      Microsoft The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly.Filmed at Mute showroom, Great Sutton Street, London. •      LinkedIn: The Future We Build on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build] •      LinkedIn: Alex Edds on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds] •      Antony Slumbers — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonyslumbers [https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonyslumbers] •      Antony's newsletter and writing: https://antonyslumbers.com [https://antonyslumbers.com]

The one with... Property Management 2.0 — Moving from Data Reporter to Value Creator.

Carl Brooks leads sustainability for CBRE's property management business — a role he built from scratch when he joined as the first embedded sustainability hire in the PM division. With a career spanning 25 years from waste management consultancy to developer-operator roles at Hammerson and MAPP, Carl now oversees sustainability across one of the largest property management platforms on the planet: 19,000 buildings, 3.2 billion square feet, across 41 countries. This episode is a ground-level look at what it actually takes to deliver on the sustainability ambitions that investors and landlords are writing into contracts. The central tension Alex and Carl dig into is one that anyone who's sat on either side of a property management agreement will recognise: investors want more — more data, more insight, more active performance management — but the property management model is structurally low-margin, fragmented, and historically designed for risk reporting rather than value creation. Something has to give. The question is whether the model gets rebuilt around genuine performance, or whether the pressure just keeps compressing margins until the system breaks. Key Timestamps • [00:00:00] : how does property management actually deliver on sustainability commitments made at investment level? • [00:03:50] Carl's career origin:, working with Diageo and Nike out of a seven-person office on the South Bank. • [00:05:00] Moving into real estate 18 years ago — starting at Hammerson • [00:06:00] Why Carl joined CBRE: the opportunity to build the first embedded, decentralised sustainability function in the PM business from scratch — at global scale. • [00:07:00] The "big green machine" problem: how siloed business lines inside firms like CBRE and JLL mean clients see one brand but get fragmented services • [00:10:00] The spectrum of client maturity globally: three broad contractual buckets • [00:12:30] CBRE's PM scale: 19,000 buildings, 3.2 billion square feet, 41 countries. • [00:18:00] The origin of the BBP Managing Agents Partnership: . • [00:20:45] What the specialist sustainability team actually looks like: • [00:21:30] Why CBRE standardised on a single data platform. • [00:24:00] The "hourglass" model: a specialist sustainability team sitting at the centre. • [00:26:00] AI-assisted triage at portfolio scale: virtual retrofit modelling, climate risk adaptation, benchmark analysis • [00:29:00] The real people problem in PM: on-ground building teams care deeply about their buildings • [00:30:00] "We want 20% more for 10% less" — the recontracting dynamic that is slowly destroying the value of property management • [00:33:00] COVID as a watershed moment: property owners suddenly understood who was keeping the lights on and the doors open. • [00:34:00] Centralised delivery vs. engaged delivery: why implementing solutions without involving building teams almost always reopens the performance gap • [00:39:00] Carl's closing answer: he wants sustainability to be the actual objective — not just a filter applied to investment decisions. • [00:42:00] The data blind spot: social impact, occupier engagement, and placemaking generate huge amounts of value that never gets captured, structured, or reported Organisations Mentioned • CBRE • JLL • LaSalle Investment Management • MAPP (previously referenced as MAP) • Hammerson • Better Buildings Partnership (BBP) • BBP Managing Agents Partnership • UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) • DeepKi • Measurabl • Diageo • Nike • Amazon • Google The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Filmed at Work.Life Farringdon Follow the Show • LinkedIn: The Future We Build Connect with Alex • LinkedIn: Alex Edds More About Our Guest • Carl Brooks on LinkedIn • CBRE Property Management: cbre.com

The one with... the $140bn Real Estate investor. On embedding sustainability, the ESG backlash, and data!

Abigail Dean is Head of Strategic Insights at Nuveen, one of the largest real estate investment managers in the world. Her role is unusual: sustainability doesn't sit in a silo at Nuveen — it lives alongside research and PropTech under a single team, deliberately designed to give a more unified view of what's actually driving real estate value. Abigail came up through sustainability at JLL before taking on this broad role at Nuveen, and that journey — from specialist to strategic integrator — shapes everything she talks about in this conversation. The central question Alex and Abigail wrestle with is one that every sustainability leader in investment management will recognise: how do you make this stuff land? Not just at theinvestment committee — that, Abigail argues, is too late — but embedded into deal sourcing, underwriting, due diligence, and asset management from day one.They get into the mechanics: how voting rights at IC actually create accountability upstream, why having ex-asset managers inside the sustainability team changes everything, and how Nuveen is navigating the anti-ESG noise from the US without changing what they actually do. They also talk about the housing crisis, the role of private capital in affordable housing, and the data problem that Abigail — after 20 years in the industry — still finds staggering. If you're a sustainability professional, an investment manager, or anyone trying to understand how institutional capital is actually making decisions right now, this one's worth your time. Key Timestamps •      [00:01:00] Alex introduces Abigail and her unusual role: sustainability, research, and PropTech under one team at Nuveen •      [00:03:00] Abigail explains the logic of the team •      [00:04:00] How mega trends, demographic shifts, and the energy transition are interconnected •      [00:07:00] Nuveen's scope beyond real estate: infrastructure and natural capital, and what cross-asset collaboration on strategic insights looks like •      [00:08:00] How sustainability and research feed into the investment committee •      [00:10:00] Why the IC vote is too late: the real work happens at pre-IC, underwriting, and due diligence — and what that looks like in practice •      [00:12:00] The debate: should sustainability sit on the IC? Abigail and Alex agree to disagree, and both have a point •      [00:15:00] How Nuveen's sustainability team is structured — and the shift from roughly 50/50 reporting vs. strategy to two-thirds execution and client engagement •      [00:16:00] Why hiring ex-asset managers into the sustainability team was a game-changer for integration and credibility with the investment side •      [00:20:00] The anti-ESG backlash in the US: how serious is it, and how Nuveen is navigating it without changing what theyactually do •      [00:21:00] Reframing sustainability as building efficiency: why every investor agrees with it when you strip away the labels •      [00:24:00] Tracking corporate SBTi commitments — still rising — and why US city-level regulations like Local Law 97 may actually have more teeth than European equivalents •      [00:27:00] The housing crisis and private capital •      [00:29:00] What government needs to do to unlock private capital for affordable housing •      [00:33:00] What problem are you trying to solve? •      [00:37:00] Is the green premium real — and does it roll out from prime to secondary markets •      [00:40:00] If you could change one thing The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Filmed at Work.Life Farringdon •      LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build [https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build] •      LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds] •      Abigail Dean on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigail-dean-nuveen [https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigail-dean-nuveen] •      Nuveen Real Estate: https://www.nuveen.com/real-estate [https://www.nuveen.com/real-estate]

The one with ... the VC aiming to remove a gigaton of carbon from the urban environment

What does it actually take to back the companies rebuilding our cities? Rahul Parekh is a Partner at 2150, the venture capital fund created by and for one of the Nordics' largest real estate investors — now under the Urban Partners brand — a €20 billion platform that combines real estate capital with venture capital to accelerate the adoption of climate technologies in the built environment. 2150 has just closed its second fund at €210 million, bringing their total AUM to nearly half a billion euros, deployed into what they call Gigacorn companies — businesses with thepotential to remove gigatons of carbon while generating real financial returns. But the tension is real: venture capital needs returns in 7–10 years, real estate moves slowly, and procurement cycles are brutal. So is VC even the right tool for this problem? In this conversation, Rahul and Alex challenge both sides — why innovation adoption in real estate is still so broken, what it actually takes for cleantech founders to raise capital and break into the sector, and why the next wave of climate tech might look a lot more like AI than renewable energy. Key timestamps: •      [00:03:04] From Goldman Sachs to VC — Rahul'scareer path into climate investing •      [00:06:08] The origin story of 2150 — how a realestate business decided to back innovation •      [00:07:43] Thinking in cities, not buildings —the urban tech thesis •      [00:09:13] The climate tech funding gap — whybuilt environment was being ignored in 2020 •      [00:10:56] Where 2150 invests — Series A &B, execution risk over technology risk •      [00:12:39] Hardware vs. software — why you needboth to have real impact •      [00:13:15] Portfolio construction — findingwinners across software, hardware, and the combination •      [00:17:44] Ember: building the electric buscompany from the ground up in Scotland •      [00:22:47] The building automation problem — whythe journey from £10m to £50m ARR is so hard •      [00:24:13] How the VC-real estate relationshipactually works in practice — and where it doesn't •      [00:28:35] Lux Well: next-generation vacuuminsulated glass and what it takes to displace incumbents •      [00:30:41] The funding gap for hardware founders— and the credit product that doesn't exist yet •      [00:35:08] Data centres, energy demand, and whythe grid won't cope — from 2% to 25–30% of global electricity •      [00:37:07] AI and scrap metal — how Meatal isunlocking primary-grade aluminium from secondary sources •      [00:39:01] Circular economy in the builtenvironment — the promise of material passporting and the logistics problem •      [00:42:07] Climate tech 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 — how themarket has changed three times in six years •      [00:45:03] The direct energy market — cuttingout the middleman between generators and corporates •      [00:46:29] If you could change one thing? Companies mentioned in this Episode •      2150 •      Urban Partners •      Goldman Sachs •      Global Founders Capital •      Ember (electric bus company, Scotland) •      Lux Well (vacuum insulated glass) •      Meatal (AI-powered secondary metals trading) •      JLL •      LaSalle Investment Management •      Stagecoach / Megabus The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Filmed at Mute showroom, Great Sutton Street, London. LinkedIn: The Future We Build [https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build]  LinkedIn: Connect with Alex Edds [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds] Connect with Rahul Parekh on LinkedIn — 2150 on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/2150vc] Learn more about 2150: 2150.vc [https://2150.vc]