Knotel acquires 42Floors in order to build the blockchain of property

Published July 18, 2018

Another day, another blockchain project. This time sources are reporting that Knotel – an office space rental service in Manhattan – has acquired 42Floors, a commercial real estate search engine in order to, according to founder Amol Sarva, get “access to data and technology on over 10 billion square feet of office space, driving further liquidity to Knotel’s marketplace while also accelerating its plans for a blockchain platform.”

The deal is not yet complete.

Knotel is building the Agile HQ platform, a way to rent office space for a few hours or a few months without getting stuck in a lease. The company has 1 million square feet of space in New York, San Francisco, London, and Berlin and it raised $100 million in funding. The company claims it has more has more buildings in New York than WeWork.

“42Floors built a powerful tool to organize a dark market that hasn’t changed in a hundred years,” said Amol Sarva, CEO of Knotel. “It’s still backroom and bilateral while the rest of the world is becoming digital and standardized. This is what leads to transactions that take months to close with a dozen middlemen – no reliable information. You can buy a house faster than you can rent a floor. Partnering together will help give owners and customers what they both want: truth.”

The reported 42Floors acquisition enables the company to bring new properties onto its platform and could let non-blockchain-based contracts move to the blockchain.

UPDATE – Text changed to reflect the type of business and ICO plans.