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Industrial technology is finally getting the attention it deserves. But we believe the biggest opportunity is still ahead of us.
When we founded Construct Capital in 2020, our thesis was that there is $50T+ of market cap to be created once the most Foundational Industries of our economy catch up from 30+ years of neglect, lack of tech innovation and underinvestment.
These sectors drive half the GDP but the industrial public companies do not represent a similar share of the S&P and they should – the industrial sector declined from 15% of the S&P 500 in 1990 to just 8% by 2024.
As manufacturing moved offshore and investment shifted toward software and the internet in the late 1990s, America's Foundational Industries fell behind, leaving decades of unrealized economic value.
We started Construct as we saw the best entrepreneurs from market making tech companies turn their attention to fixing the most Foundational Industries of our economy.
It wasn't always an easy case to make. Investors would ask us what was wrong with the supply chain, since everything seemed to work. Within months of launching Construct, the pandemic made the answer clear.
Six years later, the momentum is hard to ignore.
Construct recently surpassed $1 billion in assets under management, a milestone Bloomberg highlighted as part of the growing investor interest in industrial technology. For us, it's one more indication that the shift we anticipated when we founded Construct is taking shape.
Of the roughly 2,000 venture firms launched since 2020, fewer than 25 have reached $1 billion in assets under management, according to PitchBook and National Venture Capital Association data. We don't take that lightly, and we know it reflects the work of the companies in our portfolio as much as our own.
This milestone comes with the close of Select Fund II, our second fund dedicated to follow-on investments in our existing portfolio. It sits alongside our three core early-stage funds and gives us the capital to keep backing companies like Hadrian, Veho, Cowboy Space, Amca, Copia Automation, Swarm Aero, and Vammo as they move from early traction to category leadership. Several of them we first backed at seed.
Our approach hasn't changed. We still write our first check at seed, and we keep our core funds small on purpose so each company gets real time from our team, early on and as it scales. Select Fund II lets us, and our limited partners, stay alongside the founders we know best for longer.
And the broader market is moving in the same direction. Late-stage investment in Foundational Industries grew from approximately $641 million in 2020 to nearly $29 billion in 2025. More capital brings more competition, and that makes focus matter more. Our job is to keep finding the parts of these industries that others aren't picking over yet.
The next chapter will be about what these companies build and how far they can go. Advances in AI, automation, and manufacturing are opening up new possibilities across Foundational Industries, and we're excited to keep backing the founders turning those possibilities into real businesses.
Thank you to the limited partners who backed this thesis before it was obvious, and to the founders building the companies that prove it out.
For more on why we focus here, see our point of view on Foundational Industries or Bloomberg's coverage of the milestone. If you're building in these industries, reach out.
Dayna Grayson & Rachel Holt
Co-founders and Managing Partners