It sounds futuristic, but buildings that make their own decisions, negotiate energy contracts, and optimise their performance autonomously are here. The missing piece of AI today isn’t capability, it’s commerce. Agentic infrastructure connects intelligence to economy. 

“Buildings already generate enough data to make intelligent decisions,” says Ethan Jones. “The next step is giving them the agents to act on it.” 

Bringing buildings to life 

Right now, buildings rely on operators to interpret data and implement changes. Even with advanced analytics, the process is human-dependent. 

According to Ethan, agentic systems will change that. By combining AI, digital twins, and secure ledgers, buildings will evolve from passive assets into active participants in the economy, capable of self-management and real-time optimisation. 

“Imagine a hospital that knows its cooling demand hour by hour,” Ethan says, “and automatically trades energy in the market when prices drop, that’s good engineering, and it’s on our doorstep.” 

An ecosystem of autonomous performance 

Our architecture is already moving in this direction, using an open, modular framework which allows buildings to act as intelligent nodes within larger networks to share data, collaborate, and balance demand. 

Through secure APIs and transparent event streams, each building can interact with others in the same ecosystem, optimising grid loads, carbon use, and maintenance schedules in a coordinated way. 

“The building becomes part of a community,” Ethan explains. “It’s no longer an isolated box, rather it’s a participant.” 

Trust and traceability as a given 

As buildings start to transact, trust becomes non-negotiable. Each AI-driven decision must be recorded, validated, and auditable. That’s where distributed ledgers and data provenance frameworks come in. 

“Every action, from a temperature change to a carbon credit trade, needs a verifiable trail,” Ethan says. “That’s how you build confidence in a self-managing system.” 

Intelligent infrastructure 

Our platform has already been built for interoperability with microservices, event streams and distributed messaging as standard. Those foundations are now the launchpad for a future where intelligent agents collaborate autonomously, each operating as a node in a distributed ecosystem. 

Imagine AI agents managing HVAC systems across a city portfolio. Each agent understands performance targets, energy pricing, and carbon thresholds. It adjusts set points, requests data from peer systems, and even compensates others using smart contracts, all logged transparently on a distributed ledger. 

The human factor 

Importantly, human skills are used for their best attributes rather than wasted on manual tasks, so that roles and people will become elevated and purposeful. 

Engineers will move from operating systems to governing ecosystems. Facility managers will become orchestrators of AI behaviour, focusing on ethics, efficiency, and optimisation strategy. 

“The goal isn’t to replace people,” Ethan says. “It’s to free them from repetition so they can design, innovate, and lead. Let humans do what they do best!” 

The future we’ve already built 

Our role in that future is already living and breathing as we have created the data assurance framework underpinned by quality, connectivity, and transparency which make intelligent decision-making possible. 

“In the next decade, buildings won’t just think. They’ll collaborate, transact, and evolve. And when that happens, we’ll stop talking about ‘smart buildings’ because intelligence is the default.” 

Ethan doesn’t talk about this as theory. He talks about it as trajectory. 

The shift toward agentic infrastructure is already underway in finance, logistics, and energy markets. Buildings are next. 

“The moment we stop asking AI to wait for instructions,” he says, “we’ll see exponential efficiency gains. But we need to design for responsibility from day one.” 

In that future, AI has skin in the game as a participant in the value chain. And we’re already the technology force and backbone that will make it possible.