SoftBank leads $15M round for China’s industrial robot maker Youibot

SoftBank has picked its bet in China’s flourishing industrial robotics space. Youibot, a four-year-old startup that makes autonomous mobile robots for a range of scenarios, said it has notched close to 100 million yuan ($15.47 million) in its latest funding round led by SoftBank Ventures Asia, the Seoul-based early-stage arm of the global investment behemoth.

No room in the warehouse: Amazon fuels shortage

Amazon takes up warehouse space — a lot of it. It’s to the point where the vacancy rate is so low in some North American cities that their economies could be throttled, according to Colliers International Group and CBRE reports cited by Bloomberg News. … That’s the lowest among major North American markets.

SL Green to offer flex offices at One Vanderbilt

One of Manhattan’s biggest office landlords is hopping on the flex–office bandwagon. SL Green will dedicate the entire 54th floor of One Vanderbuilt, its 58-story Midtown East skyscraper, to flexible offices that will be known as Altus Suites, Crain’s reported.

S.F. Life Sciences Streak Continues With New $400M Waterfront Campus

The Bay Area’s life sciences boom continues with the announcement of a 570K SF waterfront complex in Brisbane, California, between San Francisco and the city’s major airport. The development, dubbed Genesis Marina, underscores what Cushman & Wakefield Managing Director Marc Ward told Bisnow has been “a golden era for life science in the Bay Area.” Even with 4M SF under construction in the region, per JLL’s 2020 sector overview, the last few weeks have seen two substantial deals for life scie…

That Vacated Sears Store May Reopen as a Public School

Mall owners have hit on a new way to fill gaping holes left by failed department stores and other departing big-box tenants: hosting public schools in need of more space.

Robotics Startup ViaBot Sweeps Up $6.1M In Funding

Investors in the company include Baseline Ventures, Morado Ventures, Grit Ventures and SOSV. While the company’s robots-as-a-service — or RAAS — offering for facility and property management deploys robots to sweep campuses clean, co-founder and CEO Gregg Ratanaphanyarat said one of the true value propositions of ViaBot is its robots’ multifunctionality….

Suburban Homes and Retail Are the Budding New Office Hotspot

Real-estate companies are transforming suburban residences and retail spaces into offices, betting that the pandemic will increase demand for workspaces in these neighborhoods.

Registration Open for Inaugural CREtech Climate Virtual Summit on May 11-12

New York, NY (March 23, 2021) — CREtech Climate, a platform devoted to educating and inspiring investment in climate tech, sustainability and ESG throughout the Built World, announced today that they will host their inaugural conference, CREtech Climate Virtual Summit on May 11-12, 2021. Hosted by CREtech Climate,  the two day summit will feature a diverse array of perspectives that are committed to creating a safer and more sustainable built environment.    …

The Rise Of The Destination-Worthy, Hospitality-Influenced Workplace

After more than a year of working remotely, how do companies get employees to return to working in the office in a post-COVID world? That’s the million-dollar question employers are continuing to wrestle — and with the coronavirus vaccine rollout now fully underway, new ideas continue to emerge about how to entice people back.

Abu Dhabi’s Aldar in deal with world’s biggest venture capital investor Fifth Wall for ‘proptech’