Google and Blackstone plan to launch an artificial-intelligence cloud company with $5 billion in equity capital from Blackstone. The new venture aims to bring 500 megawatts of capacity online in 2027, using Google’s specialized chips and software. Blackstone will be the majority owner and has over $150 billion in existing data-center assets.

Apartment owners AvalonBay Communities and Equity Residential have agreed to a merger, creating a multifamily real-estate giant worth more than $50 billion. The merger between the two REITs would bring together more than 180,000 rental apartments across the country.

The Trump administration is awarding $2 billion in grants to nine quantum-computing companies, including U.S. government equity stakes. IBM will receive $1 billion of the package. The funding comes from the 2022 Chips and Science Act, with the government taking minority equity stakes in each company.

In 2025, 26% of Americans ages 18 to 44 used family money to help fund their first home purchase down payment.

The first quarter’s total hotel transaction volume of $5.6 billion was up 14.4 percent from Q1 2025, but down 47 percent since the cyclical peak in 2022. Single-asset transaction volume reached $5.4 billion, up 33 percent year over year, and five of those single assets sold for more than $100 million, up 24 percent in volume year over year.

Generation Z is showing a welcome affinity for malls after millennials’ lukewarm allegiance, and mall owners are spending more time and money courting this generation. However, mall owners are reacting to a wave of recent disruptions to their properties by taking an extreme measure: They are banning all shoppers under 18 who aren’t accompanied by an adult.

A recent report found that 2025 was the first year that office space removals, whether through demolition or conversions, outpaced newly completed space for the first time since tracking the data began in 1988.

Revenue per available room improved through March, but noted ongoing “bifurcation” with RevPAR at luxury hotels up 7.3 percent while economy hotels were down 2.1 percent. Nationally, RevPAR is holding at $96, up 3.8 percent year to date through March.

Office-to-apartment conversions have reached a record level, with 90,300 units in different stages of development as of the start of the year. The biggest cities lead that effort, including New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles, and have helped boost office-to-residential conversions by 28% at the beginning of 2026 compared to a year earlier.

The number of jobs held by women has increased by 421,000 since the end of 2024. The number of jobs held by men has slipped by 1,000. It is a figure that comes with caveats: More women hold multiple jobs, for example, while more men are self-employed—meaning they have work but they aren’t included in the payrolls jobs count.