Kaufman & Company has announced BUILD 2030, a national development initiative that brings its housing, real estate, construction, technology, and AI infrastructure capabilities under a single coordinated investment and development strategy. The initiative is based on the premise that America’s next infrastructure cycle will be defined not only by roads, bridges, and traditional utilities but also by two things the country needs significantly more of: places for people to live and computing infrastructure capable of supporting an AI-driven economy.
“Everyone is talking about the AI infrastructure boom, but infrastructure cannot only be about machines. If we’re going to build infrastructure for AI, we should be equally serious about building infrastructure for people,” said Daniel Kaufman, Founder and Principal of Kaufman & Company.
BUILD 2030 will coordinate projects and investment across the Kaufman & Company platform, which includes operating companies spanning residential development, build-to-rent, workforce and affordable housing, custom housing, commercial and hospitality development, AI infrastructure, real estate advisory, and venture capital. The strategy builds on more than 25 years of development experience across the Kaufman platform, representing more than $2 billion in project value and more than 10,000 housing units developed.
Unlike a conventional development strategy focused on a single asset class, BUILD 2030 is designed around what Kaufman calls “infrastructure convergence.” Housing requires land, power, transportation, entitlement expertise, construction capacity, and capital. AI infrastructure requires many of the same things. Kaufman believes the developers capable of understanding both physical and digital infrastructure will have a significant advantage during the next decade.
“The real estate industry still tends to put everything into separate boxes: multifamily, build-to-rent, affordable housing, data centers, technology. We don’t see it that way. We see land, infrastructure, housing, technology and capital increasingly colliding. BUILD 2030 is our response to that,” Kaufman said.
The initiative will also emphasize community impact as Kaufman & Company evaluates future AI infrastructure locations. Rather than viewing data centers as isolated industrial projects, the company intends to explore opportunities where infrastructure investment can support broader economic development, including workforce housing, community improvements, and local employment. “We don’t want to be the developer that arrives in a community, consumes power and leaves behind a box. The better model is to ask what else our investment can unlock for the people who already live there,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman & Company’s existing platform includes residential and mixed-use development, workforce and affordable housing, build-to-rent communities, hospitality, AI infrastructure, and a venture portfolio developing technology for the real estate industry. BUILD 2030 will serve as the connective strategy across those businesses as the company evaluates its next generation of projects and partnerships.
“We’ve spent 25 years building real estate. The next 25 will be about building the infrastructure around it,” Kaufman said. The initiative matters because it signals a shift in how developers may approach the intersection of housing and technology infrastructure, potentially influencing how communities plan for AI growth and where investment flows in the coming decade.
