Kaufman & Company has announced BUILD 2030, a national development initiative that integrates its housing, real estate, construction, technology, and AI infrastructure capabilities into a single investment and development strategy. The initiative reflects a bet that America's next infrastructure cycle will be defined as much by housing and computing capacity as by traditional roads and bridges.
The company argues that the country needs significantly more places for people to live and more computing infrastructure to support 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 platform, which includes operating companies in 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 draws on more than 25 years of development experience, representing over $2 billion in project value and more than 10,000 housing units developed.
Central to the initiative is what Kaufman calls "infrastructure convergence." Housing requires land, power, transportation, entitlement expertise, construction capacity, and capital. AI infrastructure requires many of the same inputs. Kaufman believes developers who understand both physical and digital infrastructure will have a significant advantage over 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 also emphasizes community impact when evaluating future AI infrastructure locations. Rather than treating data centers as isolated industrial projects, Kaufman & 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 added.
Kaufman & Company's existing platform spans 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 signals a potential shift in how developers approach large-scale projects, blending housing and technology infrastructure to meet dual demands. As AI adoption accelerates, the need for data centers and supporting power infrastructure grows, often in the same regions facing housing shortages. By coordinating these investments, Kaufman & Company aims to create synergies that could reduce costs, streamline entitlements, and deliver more holistic community benefits.
For more information on Kaufman & Company's platform, visit https://kaufmancompany.com. Details on the BUILD 2030 initiative can be found at https://build2030.com.
