Public Storage, Welltower Form AI Partnership

This collaboration is a two-way street: Public Storage will license Welltower's custom-built AI models to more precisely target acquisitions, while Welltower gains access to Public Storage's deep expertise in operational analytics, including revenue management and customer demand forecasting. Welltower's data science platform is not new; it was established in 2016 and is managed by a multidisciplinary team of Ph.D.-level computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. The team, led by Chief Data Officer Swagat Banerjee, has been honing its AI-driven capital allocation engine for nearly a decade. The scale of the data involved is immense. Public Storage is the world's largest self-storage owner-operator, managing over 3,400 properties that cover 243 million rentable square feet. This provides a massive, real-world sandbox for applying and refining AI models. A core advantage for the partnership is the decades of proprietary data both companies hold. This historical information on operations and investments is not accessible to competitors or replicable by third-party data providers or large language models, creating what the companies call a "durable asymmetric information advantage." For Public Storage, this deal supports its "PS4.0™" growth strategy, aimed at compounding per-share value. The company has been in an aggressive expansion phase, spending billions on major acquisitions, including the $2.2 billion purchase of Simply Self Storage. The partnership reflects a wider trend of AI adoption in real estate. Morgan Stanley research suggests AI could automate up to 37% of tasks in the industry, driving an estimated $34 billion in efficiency gains by 2030 through optimized pricing, predictive maintenance, and streamlined deal-making.