It continues to be a hugely exciting time to be involved in the tech-led transformation of the global real estate market.
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At an industry level, demand and adoption are growing fast. Over $12.5 billion USD of venture capital was invested in the CRE Tech space in 2018 alone, whilst 97% of real estate companies now recognise that technology will have a major impact on their business.
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Echoing that growth, we continued to see huge demand for our own technology during 2018. As lease terms continue to shorten globally, discerning owners now understand that retaining tenants by providing quality customer experience ultimately results in asset value uplift and increased NOI. Quite simply, engaging with occupiers to create appealing and satisfying workplaces has never been more important.
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Building on the momentum of our US and UK launches in 2017, we rolled-out to a number of new cities including Philadelphia, Houston and Manchester, whilst we further expanded our global footprint by launching our first site in Ireland in October. In total, more than 135,000 people from 8,900 companies now use our platform around the world, across 135 buildings, comprising over 57 million sq ft of real estate.
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The evolution of our market-leading platform has continued as well, with major updates to our native apps and core APIs, bookings and Amplify products, along with the growth of our partnership network and enterprise customers. Already, our next major updates are just around the corner, with significant upgrades to access control, visitor management, work requests, analytics, and monetisation coming soon.

Undoubtedly our success continues to be driven by the passion, expertise and commitment of the Equiem team and I want to thank each and every one. It delights me that our employee satisfaction scores are so high and that our first three employees are all still with us. Our excellent overall staff retention means that our clients truly benefit from working with the most experienced tenant engagement team in the world.
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Lastly, I want to thank our partners and customers. As we continue with our mission to change real estate for the better one square foot at a time, we consider ourselves hugely fortunate to work with so many exceptional and supportive brands and businesses. We look forward to continuing to work with you over the course of 2019.