At a time when climate goals urgently demand innovative decarbonisation solutions, funding for green-tech startups in construction is evaporating
Picture the scene: it’s 2050, and you’ve just signed a contract to build yet another flying-skateboard distribution centre. You compare materials sourced via the circular economy on an online database and procure them in a single click. When you aarrive on site in the morning, automated machines powered by cheap renewable energy perform previously labour-intensive tasks.
This vision of construction tech (or ConTech, in corporate-geekspeak) is one that hundreds of startups with ambitions to create a greener construction industry are already working towards. But the current funding environment is not helping them to break through.
During the 2010s, venture capital (VC) firms threw money at startups with reckless abandon, hoping to become part of the next big thing. The mood has since shifted. High-profile failures, such as healthcare tech…
