Miami-based homebuilding giant Lennar Corp. acquired Veev, the Hayward-based technology startup that stunned onlookers when news of its imminent closure broke at the end of November.
Lennar spokesperson Danielle Tocco confirmed the acquisition in an email to the Business Times Thursday, but declined to give further details. The deal will see Lennar (NYSE: LEN) take full control of Veev in exchange for “several dozen million” dollars, according to Israeli business newspaper Calcalist, which first reported news of the acquisition. The deal closed Dec. 21, per financial data provider Pitchbook.
Veev did not respond to a request for comment.
Lennar is the largest single-family homebuilder in Portland, per the PBJ's List.
Fifteen-year-old Veev, which aimed to revolutionize homebuilding with its proprietary, panelized home building system, was previously valued at more than $1 billion. But the proptech effectively shut down at the end of November after it failed to secure a new tranche of funding, Veev told the Business Times in a statement at that time.
“The company will undergo an assignment for the benefit of creditors process and is hopeful that what was created can live on in some form or fashion,” the statement read.
LenX, Lennar’s venture arm, led Veev’s $75 million Series B in 2020, and was an investor in the $400 million Series D round that propelled Veev to unicorn status in 2022.
It was not clear Thursday whether Veev, under Lennar’s ownership, might continue to operate as its own unit or be incorporated into Lennar’s larger operations.
Lennar has not said whether Veev will retain a footprint in the Bay Area; LinkedIn posts from Veev employees suggest the company performed mass layoffs in the region over the last month. Calcalist reported Lennar intends to retain Veev’s “technological operations in Israel,” where the firm’s research and development operations have historically been based.
Lennar, one of the United States’ top homebuilders, announced in 2021 it planned to partner with Veev on what the pair described as a 102-home attached community in Northern California.
"Lennar and Veev share a passion for innovation, and we are excited to collaborate on this first community and in the years to come as we embrace sustainable, high-quality and effective alternatives to traditional construction," Eric Feder, president of LenX, told investors that year.
But Veev ultimately dropped out of the project at the end of 2022, the Business Times reported in May. The company did so in order to shift its focus to single-family homes, Veev CEO Amit Haller said at the time, adding that Veev’s leadership viewed single-family homes as a kind of building block it would ultimately iterate into denser residential projects.
“In order to solve the housing problem of America, we need to make sure we’re building a scalable company,” Haller said in May. “This is the best way for us to do that, to focus first on the single-family home.”
Following the firm’s closure, however, some in the proptech community speculated that Veev’s sudden switch to single-family product may have played a role in its demise.
Amid the shift, Veev moved its headquarters to Hayward, where it began operating out of 500,000 square feet at 2701 West Winton Ave., a facility it is subleasing from Amazon.
There, it planned to someday manufacture enough panels — already complete with infrastructure like plumbing and electrical — to produce the equivalent of one to two homes per day, the company told the Business Times in May. It was not clear Thursday what might become of that facility.
Lennar delivered more than 73,000 homes in 2023, it said in regulatory documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Dec. 14. Roughly a fourth of those were delivered in what Lennar describes as its "west” division, which includes California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
