Shares in Rightmove plunged sharply on Friday – falling by as much as 28% before rebounding to end the day down 12.3% – after the property‑portal announced a major ramp‑up in artificial‑intelligence (AI) investment that will temper profit growth in 2026.
Rightmove’s plans to spend heavily on artificial intelligence at the expense of profit growth deterred investors and sent shares in the property listings website down, wiping more than £1bn off its market value.
Last week the property portal announced that it is developing a range of artificial intelligence initiatives aimed at supporting estate agents.
Rightmove says these AI developments are designed to improve efficiency, enhance listings, streamline workflows, and provide smarter tools for managing clients and leads.
While details of all the individual features are yet to be revealed, the company says the developments will play a central role in the platform’s future.
Next year, Rightmove plans to invest an additional £12m on its profit and loss account, alongside £6m on capital projects, to advance its technology and AI strategy.
The £12m equates to roughly 4% of expected profits and is expected to delay the achievement of some revenue growth targets.
In a trading statement, Rightmove’s CEO, Johan Svanstrom, said that AI will be “absolutely central” to the company’s operations. He outlined a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud aimed at enhancing Rightmove’s data, AI, and platform capabilities.
The investment will focus on areas including AI-powered search, digital property valuations, and AI-enhanced operational processes, leveraging the vast amounts of data the company has collected over the years.
Despite the increased spending, Rightmove reaffirmed its 2025 revenue guidance of around 9% growth. However, the company warned that underlying operating profit growth is expected to slow to 3-5% in 2026 as the new technology investments begin to take effect.
RBC Capital Markets analyst, Anthony Codling, said: “When founded, Rightmove was in the right place at the right time. It harnessed our love of homes with a growing love of the internet creating a business where 2+2=5. Yes the Group worked hard, but its timing blessed it with super normal returns.
” Once the train had left the station, the cash rolled in and the model worked on autopilot. Previous management teams sat back and enjoyed sitting in the shade of the magic money tree they had the good fortune to tend to. However, times have changed, and the current management want to take Rightmove to a new level, to harness AI in the way that the founders harnessed the internet.
“Rightmove profits have, in the main, grown each year, but these new proposals may be a case of two steps back to move three steps forward. Current FY2026-28 consensus is ahead of today’s guidance, the pressure will be on management at today’s presentation to explain why now is the time to take a step back and shake up the money tree, how they will get the balance right between pruning to promote growth vs cutting too far, and why this is the right next move.”
This is what I’ve been warning about for more than ten years.
The systems I’ve built — and proven in practice — show exactly what happens when proper data meets modern technology. With one agent from Wigan, I’ve already shown that genuine buyers and tenants find what they want quickly, while the tyre-kickers fall away.
When that happens, the numbers that Rightmove sells as “success” start to crumble. Clicks don’t mean customers anymore.
Agents will soon see that real engagement doesn’t need a portal to prove it. And once that truth sinks in, paying high fees just to stay visible becomes impossible to justify.
Rightmove doesn’t own the data — and that’s the pin that bursts their balloon.
The competition isn’t tied to legacy systems, and it already has agents’ trust. The profit game really is up.
Rightmove has become the lingerie section of a metaphorical Kay’s catalogue — nostalgic, familiar, but no longer where serious business gets done.
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We don’t know what triggered the sell-off: was it fears about cash-flows reducing as this article implies? Or was it more existential, realising that Rightmove has just admitted its product cannot play in an AI world? You have to wonder: after 15 years of almost zero innovation (sitting under the money tree as per the quote above) does RM have the culture and skills to adapt and change?
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AI is the buzzword of the moment. Somewhere inside Rightmove, someone now has the job of figuring out how the portal fits into the LLM world.
The conclusion they’ll eventually reach is simple: ah!
Because once you understand how large language models discover, interpret, and connect verified data, you realise that Rightmove’s strength — being the gatekeeper — becomes its weakness.
In an AI-driven world, people won’t visit portals at all — they’ll bypass them simply to filter out the listings they’ve already rejected yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, while searching for the home they might have missed.
The portal era depended on repetition and reach; the intelligent era rewards precision and trust.
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Robert, You have been touting your alternative for many years and we have still to see anything vaguely threatening the portals.
The demise of RM has been discussed for years and yet they go from strength to strength.
The whole AI frenzy is still in its infancy and I have no doubt that RM will have the resources to meet the challenge posed by this technology.
The public will doubtlessly use AI to find things but AI is dependent on up to date information, ideally from a reliable structured source, RM is well positioned as are all the portals.
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Watchdog, the difference between us is that I’ve been here under my own name for years — building, and standing by what I say, build, predict, or can prove.
You post here with nothing — not even a name. You have snipes. That’s it, the sum of you
You call it “touting,” but the record shows otherwise. I made a public prediction here years ago — that anything built to challenge the status quo would be bought and shut down. It was, exactly as I said.
This isn’t the place to change the world — reaching a few hundred readers on Eye won’t do that. I’m here for the discussion, not your attempts at nastiness.
I’m not trying to bring down the empire; I’m simply describing the geography of what comes after it.
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Never one to hide your floodlight under a bushel are you Robert!
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PIE gets read by everyone — from portal reps who don’t realise that saying “AI is just predictive text” wipes out their credibility, to chief execs who oversee a fair slice of the market.
When someone takes a pop, I’ve got two options: walk away or square up. If I can do that without firing back personally, it shows I’m worth debating with.
If that annoys a few people along the way — hey ho. That’s how professionals debate, and respect is won.
I have a light to shine, nothing to hide, and win debates with fact, not attack.
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It does most certainly not get read by everyone
It is incredible the high opinion you have of yourself
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I don’t have — or need — a high opinion of myself, but I do have the fortitude to post under my own name, knowing full well my views might differ from others. That confidence isn’t arrogance, and it isn’t self-importance — it’s simply being willing to stand by what I say, and to have a debate in the face of bad manners
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Rightmove is literally the only brand the public cares about when it comes to property, and we are fools if we think that is changing due to predictive text 2.0.
They have trotted out the apparently-required statement about everything now being AI enabled (which, of course, means nothing) and will continue to be utterly dominant in their market to the point where the CMA is a complete mockery.
“In an AI-driven world, people won’t visit portals at all”
Just lol. Lmao, even. Can’t wait for the bubble to pop so we can stop pouring a thick layer of AI glazing all over every business in the world. Nobody is trusting a chatbot with their property search after the first failure.
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AI will take over
But not for a few years
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