Facebook Founder Joins Investor Table at Soho.ai in Merger Deal

Facebook’s billionaire co-founder Eduardo Saverin has joined the investor table at Soho.ai as the AI-first marketplace merges with a virtual tour company for commercial properties.

Saverin's investment firm B Capital has taken a stake in Australia's AI-first marketplace, Soho.ai and Inspace. B Capital led the round with an undisclosed investment.

Soho.ai will also merge with Inspace, an interactive 3D and predictive intelligence tool that enables asset managers and leasing agents to market, lease and manage commercial properties worldwide. Both companies will merge but will operate independently as standalone brands. Inspace has real-time tenancy data on 70% of Australia's A-grade commercial office space, and B Capital is one of its previous backers.

Jonathan Lui, SohoAI's CEO and co-founder, will become CEO of the new company, while Inspace's founder and CEO, Justin Liang, will join the board.

According to a press release, the merger will give each business a larger team and pool of resources to scale, with both businesses sharing AI and data infrastructure. The combined business creates product and technology opportunities that neither company could pursue alone.

Jonathan Lui said, "Bringing Inspace and SohoAI together is exactly what both companies need."

"We intend to keep investing in both businesses so that investors, customers, and users all get great value from this combination. Our primary goal here is to be bigger and better than before, rather than to save money or slash teams."

Liang added that Inspace customers "should be excited to have Jonathan Lui as CEO".

"As the Cofounder of Airtasker, Jonathan has a huge profile. But not everyone knows that he leads the most technically advanced AI property development team in the proptech industry. The rate of product development and the launch of new features is going to increase substantially, and that will directly benefit our customers."

SohoAI is Australia's most powerful real estate AI and enables users to search for homes that are for sale, for rent, sold, or leased and then ask follow-up questions about suburb prices, rental yields, recent sales, and market trends. The company recently relaunched as an AI-first platform.