The $1 billion deal will see the real estate firm take on Vexcel’s 45-plus-country aerial imagery programs.
US real estate giant, CoStar Group, has announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Vexcel Group for approximately $1 billion in cash.
Vexcel runs one of the world’s largest survey-grade aerial imagery programs, capturing more than 60 million images per year drawn from millions of square kilometres of aerial collection.
The company also designs and manufactures the UltraCam family of aerial cameras, which can deliver resolutions of 7.5 to 15 centimetres.
CoStar expects to finalise the acquisition in the first quarter of 2027, subject to the usual conditions and regulatory approvals.
“Rapid technology advances in aerial photography and lidar are enabling Vexcel to produce extremely high-resolution images and survey-grade measurements of land, houses, office buildings, industrial properties, retail properties, apartment buildings, construction sites, and other infrastructure in the built environment,” said Andy Florance, founder and CEO of CoStar Group.
“Combining these high-resolution images with the rapidly evolving capabilities of AI to semantically recognise and extract information and features from properties, we believe we can capture hundreds of data fields per property, across the approximately half a billion properties captured by Vexcel, creating a transformative, new, ultra-low-cost proprietary data source that makes CoStar even more valuable, more accurate, and timelier.”
With a geographic scope spanning more than 45 countries and 320 major cities, Vexcel generated revenue of more than $200 million over the past twelve months.
“By joining CoStar Group, we gain the scale, technology, and resources to broaden our reach, accelerate innovation, and deliver even greater value to customers worldwide,” said Erik Jorgensen, CEO of Vexcel.
Jorgensen and the Vexcel leadership team will continue to lead the business, and the company will continue to operate its data program under the Vexcel brand.
CoStar has been on a bit of a buying spree in recent years. In August 2025 it completed the acquisition of Australia’s very own Domain property marketplace in a deal worth about $2.3 billion. And in February 2025 it finalised the acquisition of Matterport, a 3D digital twin technology firm that operates mainly in the real estate space.
