Dubai claims to be building the future of real estate through artificial intelligence and blockchain tokenisation. What it is actually building is a mechanism to extract value from fragmented data whilst consolidating control over the data itself.
The $525 million Permira and Blackstone paid for a Property Finder minority stake in September 2025 proves the point: the real asset is not the technology. It is access to the information that prices the market.
The narrative is clear enough. Tokenisation democratises property ownership by fracturing assets into tradeable units. AI optimises their performance by analysing rental yields, occupancy rates, energy consumption, and macroeconomic signals in real-time. Smart contracts automate dividend distribution.
Markets become more liquid. Prices reflect reality. Everyone benefits. The Emirates Development Bank and the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development have both backed tokenisation projects. The Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone has designated real estate tokenisation as a strategic priority. Investment banks are hiring specialists.
But the mechanism is not what it appears.
For AI to function as a reliable pricing tool, it requires unified, auditable data. Dubai does not have this. Property records remain fragmented across government agencies, private developers, and informal channels.
There is no centralised registry that third parties can access. Building performance data is proprietary. Neighbourhood development plans are scattered. The data that does exist is often years old. An AI model built on this material does not analyse market reality. It pattern-matches against historical fiction. The “digital twin” becomes a useful fantasy.
The data holders benefit. Developers who control performance metrics curate the inputs that feed AI valuations of their own assets. Government agencies holding registry information selectively release data to favoured firms.
Large asset managers with proprietary datasets build AI systems their competitors cannot replicate. The tokenisation ecosystem does not democratise information. It monetises existing asymmetry.
This is no longer theoretical. In September 2025, Permira and Blackstone acquired a $525 million minority stake in Property Finder, the region’s largest real estate classifieds platform.
The transaction grants them access to the raw data flowing through Property Finder’s marketplace before competitors can access it. Permira, making its first Middle East investment, and Blackstone now control privileged information about property transactions across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
They build proprietary AI models on this data. Inform their own real estate investments with signals no one else sees. The narrative emphasises “global expertise” and “acceleration.” The reality is acquisition of the data intermediary that prices the market. The $525 million is the cost of that monopoly.
The regulatory layer masks this further. Virtual Asset Regulatory Authorities mandate Know-Your-Customer checks and transaction monitoring. They automate enforcement through AI. What they cannot do is force the underlying data to be honest.
An AI system enforcing KYC rules against a bad dataset performs theatre, not governance. It detects only the evasion it was designed to see. Sophisticated actors will find the gaps. Whether they do, and how quickly, remains invisible to any public measurement. This is where the system becomes genuinely opaque.
Liquidity is another mechanism worth examining. When markets become more liquid, volatility increases. Buyers and sellers can execute trades at scale. Prices move rapidly. Active traders with algorithmic systems profit from this velocity. Long-term investors do not.
The “democratisation” of access creates a new class of tokenised real estate securities whose price movements bear increasingly loose connection to the underlying physical asset. The property itself remains stable. The token becomes a speculation machine.
Dubai is positioned to lead this integration precisely because it can control the terms of integration. Its centralised planning apparatus can mandate data standards, enforce participation in tokenisation schemes, and shape the regulatory framework that determines who profits.
This is not a neutral technological shift. It is a consolidation of power dressed as openness.
Real estate tokenisation powered by artificial intelligence is inevitable. Dubai should be honest about what it is building: a system that centralises data control, monetises existing asymmetries, and automates the enforcement that preserves these asymmetries.
AI in Dubai real estate is here to stay. Blackstone, on the other hand, has a quantum advantage.