CES Smart Buildings

The Real Estate Espresso Podcast

CES Smart Buildings

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Welcome to the Real Estate Espresso Podcast, your morning shot at what’s new in the world of real estate investing. I’m your host, Victor Menasce.

Every year in January, the global tech industry converges on Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. I used to attend this conference religiously in the past, less frequently now that my focus is on real estate rather than technology.

Well, this year, as with last, the central theme to CES is artificial intelligence. Virtually everything being showcased at CES this year is AI-enabled in some way.

On yesterday’s show, we talked about some announcements at the show that pertain to the construction side of real estate investing, and on today’s show, we’re talking about innovations in the smart building arena.

Now to be clear, many of the products present at this year’s show did not wait for a trade show to be announced or deployed in the market, for that matter. In fact, our team has been designing and deploying AI-enabled security cameras for several months. That includes facial recognition for building entry systems.

The Consumer Electronics Show has long been a launch pad for futuristic gadgets, but in recent years, it’s transformed into a stage for innovations in building automation. This year was no exception.

When it comes to building automation, the theme this year at CES could be encapsulated as “AI everywhere” and “intelligent integration.” It’s not just about adding AI to individual devices, but embedding it deeply into the core infrastructure of homes, of commercial spaces, even including predictive capabilities. And it’s opening up unprecedented levels of energy management.

Perhaps the most significant trend was the move towards truly integrating building management. Now for years, the smart home and the smart building landscape have been a patchwork of proprietary systems and competing standards. There have been a lot of standards in the past including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee. An evolution of ZigBee is the newer standard called Matter. We saw a whole host of new product announcements that use Matter as the background communication technology.

Now while Matter is not a new standard, continued and expanded adoption has been foundational for a lot of these products. Nearly every single major smart home device and platform including Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, Apple Home, they all support Matter and they promise a future where devices from different manufacturers can communicate and interoperate pretty seamlessly.

For building automation, that means simpler installation, fewer compatibility headaches, and more robust systems for end-users, whether it’s in a residential setting or a commercial setting. Developers no longer need to bet on a single ecosystem, and it allows for a lot more choice and future-proofing.

Samsung highlighted its vision for the interconnected home with their technology called SmartThings. It goes well beyond appliances. They’ve got new partnerships and new device integrations. They showed how a single platform can manage everything from energy consumption, which by the way is also now integrated with the Tesla Powerwall for dynamic demand response, to more advanced security and wellness monitoring.

That level of control powered by AI enables personalized climate control that learns your preferences, lighting systems that adjust to circadian rhythms, and security systems that predict unusual behavior.

Energy management has been absolutely a top priority, with AI taking a central role in optimizing consumption and reducing waste. Some of the leading HVAC manufacturers showcased systems with embedded AI that goes beyond simple scheduling. These new generations of smart thermostats and zone control systems learn the occupant patterns, they predict external weather changes, and they even analyze utility pricing to adjust heating and cooling.

This kind of predictive climate control isn’t just about comfort, it’s about significant reductions in energy bills for both residential and commercial properties. Those systems are also detailing energy consumption analytics, very important for building owners aiming for managing their operational costs.

There are innovations on the residential side as well. Smart appliances are turning into energy hubs. Appliances are no longer passive. For example, the GE Profile smart refrigerator with a kitchen assistant highlights how even kitchen appliances are becoming data-rich nodes within the network. By tracking inventory and usage, that AI-powered appliance can contribute to reducing food waste. But it’s got larger implications in its potential to integrate with home energy management systems. It tends to optimize its power draw during off-peak hours in response to various signals from the power grid.

There are similar advancements in smart washing machines and dishwashers that are focused on load sensing and optimizing the cycle times, again for energy and water conservation.

There’s advanced biometric and proximity access. We see this from multiple companies. We’re very big users in our company of Ubiquiti, but companies like Accora demonstrated next-generation smart locks using ultra-wideband technology, and that allows for secure, seamless entry systems that detect the location and direction of the user. So for multifamily apartments and commercial spaces, the ultra-wideband technology can enable truly hands-free access control. It improves both convenience and security by reducing false unlocks and enhancing the anti-theft measures.

Facial recognition, which has been integrated with a lot of video doorbells and entry points, also showed a lot of improvements in both speed and accuracy, even in low-light conditions.

There’s a new concept coming into play called Spatial AI. This refers to AI’s ability to understand the physical layout of a space—the location of the occupants, their movements. For example, lights might turn on incrementally as someone walks into a hallway, or a specific zone’s temperature might adjust only when it’s occupied. And that level of personalized control enhances both the comfort and it minimizes energy waste.

Beyond the immediate end-user experience, many of the CES exhibits hinted at profound impacts on how buildings are managed and constructed. There are some new industrial AI platforms specifically from both Siemens and NVIDIA that are going to create highly accurate virtual models of buildings that allow for simulation of energy usage, of airflow, and that translates into predictive maintenance for both the building automation systems as well as identifying future failures in HVAC systems—that’s going to allow for much more proactive maintenance before system failures become user-visible.

So this year CES cemented the idea that building automation is no longer just a novelty, it’s actually becoming table stakes. The integration of AI with seamless connectivity with standards like Matter and even some of the legacy standards is not just technology improvement for the sake of technology, but actually improving the tenant experience.

So as you think about that, take a look at some of the innovations that were announced this year at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Have an awesome rest of your day. Go make some great things happen. And we’ll talk to you again tomorrow.

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