MIPIM is often described as networking and deal-making.

Both are true, of course. But beneath the noise, the stands and the inevitable rosé-fuelled meetings, it’s also one of the best annual indicators of where the real estate industry actually thinks it’s going.

Not through the marketing or the press releases, but through what people end up spending time talking about once they arrive.

Look closely enough at the programme and the conversations around it and patterns begin to emerge: the issues investors are worrying about, the technologies operators are experimenting with, and the themes that have quietly shifted from “interesting” to “urgent”.

This year the signals are unusually clear.

Housing delivery dominates the political conversation. Data centres and digital infrastructure have become mainstream real estate. Net zero has moved from aspiration to something increasingly tied to underwriting and financing. And technology - particularly AI - has moved from the periphery of the industry into the centre of capital allocation discussions.

You can see that directly in the conference agenda. Technology is no longer sitting off to one side as an innovation track. It has been woven into the main programme. Alongside the flagship “Housing Matters!” initiative, the official themes highlight AI disruption, digital infrastructure, data centres and the road to net zero as central issues shaping the industry.

That positioning matters.

When Nobel Prize-winning economist Philippe Aghion opens the conference discussing how innovation drives productivity, urban resilience and the green transition, the framing is clear. Technology is not being presented as a set of tools. It is being framed as something closer to economic infrastructure.

In other words, the question is no longer what interesting tech exists?

It’s what actually changes how cities are financed, built and operated.

For years proptech sat slightly adjacent to the real estate industry: energetic, promising, occasionally over-hyped. The agenda for MIPIM 2026 suggests the conversation has moved into a different phase.

The industry is no longer talking about tools.

It’s talking about outcomes.

And that shift has been building for some time - MIPIM 2026 simply makes it visible.

Where the Technology Conversation Has Moved

One of the most revealing parts of the programme this year sits on the Leaders’ Perspective stage, where sessions such as “Digital Real Estate Innovations” and “AI in Real Estate Investment: What’s Being Used, What’s Possible, and What’s Next?” are aimed squarely at CIOs, investment committees and strategy leaders.

That audience tells you a lot.

These are not product demonstrations. They are discussions about capital allocation. The underlying question being explored is no longer what AI can automate inside a property company. The more interesting question is how it can influence underwriting, site selection, leasing performance, retrofit decisions and portfolio strategy.

That is a much higher bar for technology providers. It also reflects what we’ve seen in the market over the past year.

Proptech funding rebounded strongly in 2025 – up roughly 68% year-on-year – but the capital didn’t distribute itself evenly across the ecosystem. Investors increasingly backed platforms that sit directly inside operational or financial workflows. Leasing infrastructure, construction robotics, portfolio analytics, investor reporting systems – platforms embedded where decisions are actually made.

That trend is likely to continue. The era of interesting but isolated point solutions is fading. Buyers increasingly want platforms that integrate data flows across multiple parts of the asset lifecycle.

Put bluntly: a clever feature is not enough anymore. It needs to influence outcomes.

Platforms, Not Point Solutions

This is another pattern worth paying attention to as you move around the conference.

For much of the past decade, proptech produced hundreds of point solutions. A tool for this workflow. A dashboard for that process. Something to bolt on to an existing system.

But large real estate organisations are increasingly trying to simplify their technology stacks rather than expand them. That means consolidation around platforms capable of integrating multiple functions – leasing, operations, capital reporting, development management, sustainability metrics – into a coherent system.

You can expect to hear this theme repeatedly in conversations around digital real estate platforms and data infrastructure. The interesting companies are no longer those solving a narrow operational inconvenience. They are the ones quietly building operating systems for parts of the real estate industry.

That’s where the long-term value tends to concentrate.

AI Is Moving Into the Physical World

Another area where the conference agenda is revealing is the increasing focus on hardware and physical infrastructure, not just software. This was also a major theme in the Goldman Sachs Disruptive Technology Symposium this week.

The Data Centres Summit – “From bits to bricks” – is an obvious example. Data centres have quickly become one of the most strategically important asset classes in global real estate, driven by the explosive demand for compute power as AI adoption accelerates.

But the interesting story here isn’t just about server racks.

It’s about land, power and planning.

Data centres are forcing cities and investors to grapple with questions that sit squarely in the real world: grid capacity, energy sourcing, planning approvals, cooling infrastructure and land allocation. Those constraints are beginning to shape investment strategies just as much as yield projections.

For proptech companies working on planning intelligence, grid optimisation, infrastructure modelling or energy analytics, this is where software meets the physical limits of the built environment.

The same dynamic appears in other parts of the agenda as well. Sessions in the Road to Zero programme – including discussions such as “Intelligent Transitions: AI and Technology Powering the Net-Zero Shift” – increasingly bring together technology providers, asset owners and lenders in the same room.

When lenders enter the conversation, the tone changes.

Retrofit decisions start being discussed in terms of financing structures and IRR calculations rather than sustainability pledges. Carbon reporting becomes something lenders and investors want visibility on because it affects asset value and regulatory risk.

Technology becomes relevant because it improves measurement and decision-making, not because it sounds progressive.

The Rise of Agentic AI

Another theme likely to surface repeatedly in conversations this year is the emergence of agentic AI – systems capable of autonomously executing multi-step workflows rather than simply analysing data.

For real estate organisations, that opens up interesting possibilities.

Instead of software providing dashboards and alerts, AI agents can increasingly execute tasks: analysing market data, identifying viable sites, preparing underwriting models, coordinating operational processes or even managing elements of leasing and customer interaction.

But there is also an important buyer perspective emerging.

Real estate executives are becoming increasingly wary of paying for technology based purely on licences and promises. If AI really is capable of transforming workflows, buyers will increasingly expect outcome-based pricing models.

That means tying technology costs more closely to measurable results – time saved, revenue improved, costs reduced or risk avoided.

It’s not difficult to see why. CFOs are far more comfortable approving investments where the return profile is predictable and measurable. For proptech founders, understanding this shift in procurement expectations will be as important as the technology itself.

Housing, Planning and the Real Bottleneck

While technology and infrastructure dominate many parts of the programme, housing still sits at the centre of the political conversation.

The “Housing Matters!” initiative highlights the global challenge of delivering sufficient homes in major cities. But the interesting discussion is likely to be less about affordability rhetoric and more about delivery mechanics.

Planning systems, infrastructure capacity, SME developer viability and funding structures all play a role in determining whether projects actually get built.

Technology has a role here too – particularly in areas like site identification, planning intelligence, viability modelling and development finance infrastructure. The biggest opportunity is rarely in selling homes faster; it’s in enabling more viable homes to be delivered in the first place.

If the housing sessions get into that level of detail, they will be worth attending, and see my widely-read-summary of a recent FT article on the fractured economics of housing delivery here: linkedin.com

The Atmosphere That Makes MIPIM Work

Of course, MIPIM isn’t just about panels.

It’s a strange and slightly wonderful collision between different generations of the real estate industry. Long-established developers walking the Croisette alongside founders building AI-native companies. Sovereign wealth funds sitting down with climate-tech startups. Planning officials talking with data scientists.

That mix is one of the reasons the conference still works.

Real estate has always been a relationship-driven industry. Technology is not replacing that. But it is increasingly shaping the context in which those relationships operate.

Data sits alongside instinct. Models sit alongside experience. Decisions are being informed by both.

That combination – rather than the idea of technology somehow replacing the industry – is what makes the current moment interesting.

A Maturing Industry

Taken together, MIPIM 2026 feels like a moment of maturation for proptech.

There is capital in the system. Funding recovered strongly in 2025. There is genuine experimentation happening across AI, infrastructure, climate technology and development workflows.

But there is also a noticeable shift in expectations.

Technology is no longer interesting simply because it is new. It is interesting when it changes outcomes – when it improves underwriting certainty, reduces delivery risk, unlocks constrained sites or improves asset performance.

That’s a more demanding environment for founders.

It’s also a healthier one for the industry.

I’ll be in Cannes from 9–13 March. If you’re attending and want to compare notes on where proptech, capital and the built environment are heading next, feel free to reach out.

More details on the conference agenda here: mipim.com

Read more proptech insights and ‘so whats’ in my Proptech Briefing this Mike Drop newsletter (and if you’re not one of the 7,000 subscribers, do follow here to stay plugged in: lnkd.in).

The Technology Buyer Appendix: Five Questions to Ask Every Proptech Founder at MIPIM

MIPIM will be full of proptech founders, new platforms and ambitious ideas. That’s a good thing - the industry needs experimentation.

But the market is maturing quickly, and the questions worth asking founders have changed.

Here are five that tend to separate the genuinely interesting companies from the noise.

1. What specific outcome does your product change?

The easiest way to cut through the technology narrative is to ask what actually improves.

Does the platform increase leasing velocity? Improve underwriting certainty? Reduce construction delays? Lower operating costs? Unlock viable development sites?

If the answer is vague, the technology probably still sits in the “interesting tool” category rather than the “industry infrastructure” category.

2. Where do you sit in the real estate decision-making chain?

Real estate decisions ultimately happen in a few key places: underwriting, planning, development delivery, asset management and capital allocation.

Technology that sits directly in one of those decision points tends to have far greater long-term impact than tools that operate around the edges of the workflow.

Understanding where a platform sits in that chain tells you a lot about its potential.

3. Are you a platform or a point solution?

Over the past decade, proptech produced hundreds of narrow solutions solving very specific problems.

But large property organisations are increasingly consolidating technology stacks rather than expanding them.

That means platforms capable of integrating multiple workflows - data, operations, finance and reporting - are often far more attractive than single-purpose tools.

If a product can’t easily integrate into a broader ecosystem, it will struggle to scale.

4. How does your AI actually work in practice?

AI will be everywhere at MIPIM this year.

The interesting distinction is between tools that simply add AI features and companies that genuinely embed AI into operational workflows.

Increasingly, the conversation is shifting towards agentic AI

- systems capable of executing tasks autonomously rather than just analysing data.

Ask founders what their AI actually does day-to-day inside a client organisation. The answer will usually reveal whether it’s experimental or essential.

5. How do customers pay - and how do they justify the spend?

One of the biggest barriers to technology adoption in real estate is still internal approval.

If the cost sits entirely as a software licence, the CFO often sees it as an expense. If pricing is tied to measurable outcomes - savings, revenue improvements or risk reduction - the investment case becomes far easier.

As AI becomes more capable of executing real workflows, we’re likely to see more outcome-based pricing models emerge. That’s something buyers should be pushing for, and founders should be thinking about.