The location-intelligence platform digitises the built world to help consumers, investors, developers, and governments make better decisions
Montreal-based prop tech startup Local Logic has raised $17.5 million CAD in Series B funding to continue its expansion in the United States while developing a series of new data products. Co-founder Vincent-Charles Hodder said that the company intends to move toward predictive and prescriptive artificial intelligence (AI) to help its customers make better quality decisions when it comes to location-based risks and opportunities in real estate. With more than 85 billion unique data points, the platform creates digital twins of cities.
GroundBreak Ventures and the provincial innovation fund Investissement Québec led the round, with participation from Band Capital Partners (an affiliate of Triovest Realty Advisors), Cycle Capital, Desjardins Group, Jones Boys Ventures, Second Century Ventures, and Shadow Ventures. The raise closed in early June.
A location-intelligence platform that digitises the built world for consumers, investors, developers, and governments, Local Logic quantifies the built world and offers predictive, precise analytics to inform the present and future of over 250 million individual addresses. It provides the industry with granular, proprietary, and actionable location insights to understand how the built world impacts the risk and return of real estate investment decisions of all scales and at all levels of sophistication.
Moving forward, the start-up wants to expand its partnerships with broker sites and multiple listing service (MLS) organisations to impact every real estate decision in the United States and Canada. According to Hodder, how people move around is dictated by the built world. Factors that affect home buyers, developers and investors include things like whether there’s a grocery store next door, and whether you can walk to work or to public transportation. “We strongly believe a consumer or investor will be able to consider those things if we are able to quantify them and tell that story through data,” Hodder said.
To that end, Local Logic presents location as data, which could encompass everything from a heat map or a visually pleasing graphic, to indices presented as a numerical score such as for walkability, for example. “What we are really excited about is we’re trying to tell the story of where that location has been, where it is today, and how it is evolving over time,” Hodder said. “What is it going to be like in five years? What are the risks or if you think about things like climate risk, or the change over time? We’re really bullish on our ability to offer that visibility so folks are making a more informed decision as to whether that fits their lifestyle or what they’re trying to achieve.”
Local Logic secured $8 million CAD in Series A financing in 2020. Previously, the start-up raised a $1.15 million funding round led by Cycle Capital Management in June 2017. It currently has 60 employees but over the next year, it plans to add new roles in the US, and more engineers in Montreal. Hodder added that it’s a good representation of the appetite in commercial real estate and proptech in general for more data and analytics. “It’s becoming top-of-mind for the industry.”
