Article: 2026 Proptech Predictions: Anyone Up for AI?

Published: DECEMBER 16, 2025 | Commercial Observer

Commercial Observer’s latest 2026 PropTech predictions highlight how AI will continue to reshape the built environment, with increasing momentum around reality-captured data, construction-focused intelligence, and practical automation beyond digital-only applications.

A key theme in the article is the shift from “AI in the cloud” to AI that understands and operates in the physical world—often described as Spatial AI or Physical AI. Rather than broad, general-purpose robotics, the outlook points toward specialized systems designed to solve real, high-frequency tasks on job sites, supported by better sensing, data capture, and operational workflows.

Henri Lee, CEO of Xpanner, reinforces this direction by emphasizing that Physical AI in construction is not a distant vision—it is being built through the combination of robotics, sensing, and real-time control, deployed directly in the field. His comments underscore that the industry’s next leap forward will be driven by real-world execution data: machine behavior, jobsite conditions, and operational patterns that cannot be replicated through internet-scale training alone. By continuously collecting and applying this data across projects, Physical AI systems can improve reliability, safety, and consistency—unlocking a scalable path to supervised, unmanned jobsite operations.

Together, these perspectives point to 2026 as a critical inflection point, where Physical AI moves beyond pilots and becomes a foundation for more measurable, repeatable, and data-driven construction execution.