Startup investors continue to invest in clean concrete.
Over the past few years, firms in the industry have raised greater than $750 million in enterprise capital funding. Investment continues to flow, and in Silicon Valley Fortressa company developing low-emission cement technologies this week closed its largest funding round of the 12 months.
Five-year-old Fortera announced On Wednesday, it was announced that the company had raised $85 million in Series C funding with the support of long-term investors. Khosla’s ventures AND TemasekThe money will probably be used to implement the technology at existing cement plants, with the aim of manufacturing green cement with 70% less carbon dioxide emissions than conventional varieties.
Fortera is one of the most funded startups in the long list of clean cement and concrete firms. To illustrate this, we used Crunchbase data to collect a sample of 28 firms that have raised seed capital for enterprise capital financing, with the majority of the capital raised in 2023 and 2024.
Startups are leaning at an early stage
It’s value noting that the startups on our list are all in their early stages. For the overwhelming majority, their last funding round was at the seed or Series A stage.
Only one company raised money in the latest Series B funding round – based in Oakland, California Mighty buildingsA 3D-printed homebuilding startup goals to make construction carbon negative, in part by using bio-based and recyclable materials as an alternative of traditional concrete.
Meanwhile, Fortera was the only one to reach Series C or later. But as more firms on the list mature beyond the early stage, we are able to expect to see funding rounds each later and larger.
How Venture Capitalists Learned to Love Brick-and-mortar Buildings
While cement — literally the mortar in “bricks and mortar” — may seem to be an unlikely selection for a enterprise capital industry promoting digital technologies, the space has some characteristics that investors are looking for.
First, it’s a huge market. It’s widely believed that cement is the most generally used material on the planet after water. 1 According to Global Cement and Concrete AssociationIt is the mostly used man-made material.
Market studies typically peg the global ready-mix concrete (made from cement) market at greater than $800 billion annually. Projections also predict continued growth as humanity continues its quest to cover more of the planet with concrete.
Given the material’s ubiquity and problematic environmental footprint, it is simple to see the appeal of greener alternatives. Scientists say the cement industry is the major factor of climate change and currently accounts for 5–8% of worldwide human-caused CO₂ emissions each 12 months.
Buildings, in general, are one of the major producers of greenhouse gases. Currently, industrial sources estimate that existing buildings and those under construction generate around 40% of annual global CO₂ emissions, with a large proportion of those emissions coming from building materials.
As the green concrete startup market grows, there is hope that contractors will have the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint while still delivering big profits for investors.