The industrial age of real estate is moving at the speed of light. And Gary Keller, co-founder of Keller Williams, has emphasized time and again that technology companies are rushing into real estate and jockeying for every agent’s data.
To help agents be competitive in today’s fast-paced digital boom, Keller Williams has acquired Smarter Agent and is partnering with KUNGFU.AI and CognitiveScale to make the company’s technology smarter, faster. The partnerships come on the heels of the company’s successful pivot to tech, the birth of the Keller Cloud, as well as an award-winning AI assistant.
Smarter Agent acquisition to help agents create branded search apps
Early in September, Keller Williams acquired Smarter Agent, the most widely used mobile platform, operating in more than 3,000 brokerages across the country. The move perfectly positions the company to compete with big players like Zillow and Redfin. In fact, when news broke of the acquisition, Zillow’s stock fell by 7 percent.
The Smarter Agent platform helps agents create branded search apps across 650 multiple listing services. Josh Team, chief innovation officer at Keller Williams, says, “We are building the end-to-end platform for real estate. Smarter Agent, our agent’s branded mobile app, will be connected in real-time with their database, marketing plans, and Kelle – our AI – as part of an all-in-one system, allowing Keller Williams agents to simplify their life and focus on providing the best consumer experience.”
KUNGFU.AI partnership unleashes even more insights to agents
Additionally, Keller Williams has partnered with KUNGFU.AI, an Austin-based artificial intelligence services organization. The goal is to build a new and robust real estate contract-reading skill for Kelle: a proprietary AI-powered virtual assistant exclusively for KW agents.
Launched in mid-February of 2018, Kelle has more than 97,000 monthly active users and the Kelle mobile app has over 120,000 downloads.
The partnership will allow Kelle to scan, read, and deliver the details of a handwritten and typed PDF-based real estate contract to the agent in about a minute. Using computer vision technology, KUNGFU.AI returns critical information, such as sales price, from contracts via Kelle into the proprietary CRM platform, KWCommand. The innovative offering, available soon, cuts down on time and manual data entry, allowing the agent and client to move faster through the home-buying process. The partnership helps expedite this new skill for Kelle.
“With KUNGFU.AI, we’re adding top experts and leaders in the field of artificial intelligence to our strong internal development team,” said KW Chief Product Officer Neil Dholakia in a press release. “We’re rapidly accelerating and bringing more and more value through our proprietary technology to empower agents to provide the best consumer experience.
"Through this partnership, we will bring a highly anticipated new Kelle skill to our agents fast.”
CognitiveScale partnership opens the door for faster AI innovations
To speed up the development of technology products that make it easier for agents to do business with their clients, Keller Williams has partnered with CognitiveScale, a leader in augmented intelligence software. The move hastens the development of new skills for Kelle. Instead of working on new features one at a time, CognitiveScale’s Cortex 5 allows Keller Williams to speed up the ability to create, test, and roll out multiple new AI innovations.
As more and more data is powered through artificial intelligence, these acquisitions and partnerships give Keller Williams the advantage of working with like-minded companies on Keller Williams’ proprietary networks to mature the company’s technology faster and make the Keller Cloud and Kelle stronger.
The growth of its technology offerings fortifies the company’s competitive edge. Gary Keller reiterates that technology advances will protect agents. “Putting technology that works into their hands is the only thing we’re focused on.”
The KW Data Rights Pledge
As Keller Williams inks new deals and expands the list of partners plugging into and supporting the Keller Cloud, the KW Data Rights Pledge remains intact.