Riyadh Just Became one of PropTech’s most credible new capitals: Highlights from The Global PropTech Summit 2025

This past October 2025 in Riyadh the conversation about real estate’s future wasn’t theoretical, it was operational. The Global PropTech Summit 2025 (TGPS) convened over 100 speakers and delegations from 80+ countries around one defining theme: Innovation for a Sustainable Future. Over two tightly programmed days, the through‑line was clear: property has moved from blueprints to algorithms — from static assets to living, data‑driven systems.

Why this mattered — and why Riyadh

Accelerated by Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia showcased how policy, capital, and technology can align to compress timelines from pilot to platform. Mega‑initiatives like NEOM, Qiddiya, and Diriyah Gate served as proof points for sustainable infrastructure, renewable energy, and city‑scale digital twins. For global attendees, Riyadh read as a working laboratory, a place building its digital framework from the ground up while many mature markets wrestle with legacy drag.

What stood out

1) AI as infrastructure. Sessions highlighted AI moving beyond prototypes to production: predicting land values, optimizing asset performance, and powering AI‑first transactions. The mood: practical, not speculative.

2) Digital twins at city scale. The showcase of urban‑level modeling reframed development as a software cycle: plan, simulate, and iterate before a shovel hits the ground.

3) Finance is being re‑coded. Tokenization and new data standards are starting to rewrite how property is financed and owned, with sustainability performance feeding directly into asset value.

4) People‑first design. A consistent refrain: technology should enhance human experience; from housing to workplaces, through measuring comfort, community, and well‑being alongside carbon and cost.

Voices & vantage points

• Levent Künzi (Properti) unpacked “The End of Brokerage As We Know It”, underscoring how AI‑first, trust‑verified transactions are reshaping the customer journey.
  
  
• Simon Ardonceau (AIRE) showed how predictive algorithms are redefining valuation and planning across the Middle East, linking planning intelligence to faster approvals and better outcomes.
  
  
• César López (Findspo) reframed territorial intelligence as the backbone of climate‑resilient design and smarter workforce mobility.
  
  

Across perspectives, the takeaway was consistent: PropTech is operational, not ornamental.

Policy, platforms, and speed

Senior voices from national real estate authorities and major institutions emphasized how unified governance and digital policy can reduce friction without sacrificing scale or sustainability. In contrast to fragmented data environments elsewhere, the Kingdom’s build‑from‑scratch approach is enabling synchronized infrastructure, data, and finance.

The global ripple effect

While the U.S. and Europe navigate legacy regulation and carbon‑heavy stock, Riyadh provided a template for policy agility and implementation speed. For investors, that points to new risk/return models. For operators, it signals a shift from project pipelines to product roadmaps for the built world.

Quick stats that framed the stakes

• Global real estate: ~$393T (Savills, end-2024 / start-2025 estimate) still early in digitization.
  
  
• PropTech market: set to surpass ~$88B by 2032, with impact that extends far beyond software revenue into asset performance, resilience, and livability.
  
  

Standout ideas to watch

• CRE 3.0: managing atoms at the speed of bits for buildings that evolve like software; predictive maintenance tied to sustainability metrics and NOI.
  
  
• Experience‑driven leasing: platforms that treat occupiers as continuous users rather than one‑time tenants.
  
  
• Data‑ready development: projects designed with measurement, interoperability, and governance baked in from day one.
  
  

The bottom line

Across October 26–27, 2025, Riyadh acted like the operating system for real estate’s next decade. TGPS 2025 didn’t just celebrate innovation — it showed how to deploy it at scale. As national strategies, patient capital, and a deepening tech ecosystem converge, Riyadh has a credible claim as PropTech’s new global capital.