Cushman & Wakefield Launches Model Designed to Quantify AI Momentum Across the Built Environment

New York, February 21, 2026: Cushman & Wakefield has announced the launch of its AI Impact Barometer, by Cushman & Wakefield, a trailblazing data-driven tool designed to help investors, occupiers and developers understand how artificial intelligence is changing the global economy and what that means for the built environment. By developing the first tool of its kind in the commercial real estate industry, Cushman & Wakefield is using data to help clients find consensus towards action.

The AI Impact Barometer brings together a wide range of economic, capital markets and property indicators to track how AI adoption is moving from experimentation to core business infrastructure, and how that shift is influencing demand for space across sectors, including data centers, industrial and office.

“AI is no longer a future concept. It is becoming a structural force in the economy,” said Kevin Thorpe, Global Chief Economist. “Our AI Impact Barometer is designed to cut through the noise and give clients a clear, data-driven way to see where AI is driving growth, where it is creating pressure, and how those forces are showing up in the built environment.”

Rather than focusing on a single metric, the tool groups indicators into clear themes, such as AI adoption, capital investment, labor market shifts and infrastructure demand, and translates them into easy-to-interpret “AI momentum scores.” These scores are intended to show both the direction and the intensity of AI’s impact on different parts of the economy and the built environment.

Early insights highlighted by Cushman & Wakefield’s research suggest that:

• Key metrics for tracking the sustainability of the AI-driven data center boom, such as pre-commitment rates for projects under construction, continue to trend in a positive direction even as new investment floods the sector.
• Bulk distribution centers built since 2020 typically offer more than 20% higher electrical supply per square foot than their predecessors, positioning them for outsized leasing as warehouse automation advances.
• AI is amplifying pre-existing office market polarization trends. Leasing and investment targeting prime properties in tech innovation hubs has improved notably in recent months, while obsolescence risk is increasing for lower quality space.

More broadly, AI is emerging as a long-term demand engine, but its benefits are uneven across sectors and asset classes.

The AI Impact Barometer is the first step in a broader, multi-pronged initiative from Cushman & Wakefield’s Think Tank to provide ongoing insight into how AI is reshaping markets and investment decisions. The firm plans to update the model regularly and roll out additional research and thought leadership throughout 2026.

“Our goal is simple,” Abby Corbett, Principal Economist, Head of Investor Insights, added. “We want to give clients a practical, credible way to track how one of the biggest economic shifts of our time is playing out in real estate, and what to do about it.”