Beyond the Pilot Who Will Finance the Future?

Near the end of the cement Ripple, one start-up listed what it already had. Feedstock was contracted for the plant it wants to build, trials with real customers had turned into offtake contracts, follow-on investors were lined up and a credit agreement was in place. What it lacked, its finance chief said, was a lead investor willing to take the leap of faith. The answer came from a late-stage infrastructure investor who had worn a suit to stand out. They did not want to take a leap of faith, and if everything on that list were true, they did not see one.

That exchange held the whole session in small. The technology to cut cement's emissions exists. What comes after the pilot is the problem.

Twenty pilots a year

Liliana Cruz of Cemex Ventures reminded the table that cement produces about 8% of global CO₂ emissions, most of it from the chemistry of making cement itself, so cleaner fuels and electrification cut only part of it. Of the other levers, only carbon capture covers the whole footprint, and it is complex and hard to finance.

Juan Nieto of Zacua Ventures started investing in the field at Cemex in 2017, when it ran perhaps five to seven pilots a year. Liliana's team now runs more than 20. The struggle is always what comes after. A founder had recently told an industry audience that newcomers should think twice, because at Series B there is basically no capital. The remark left Juan cold. The funded companies in the space average a technology readiness level of three to five, and generalists who do not know the industry will pick a physical AI company instead. A single front-end engineering study at Cemex had cost $12 million before anything was deployed. Another fund told Juan it wanted at least $3 million in revenue and no more than $15 million raised, criteria perhaps two or three companies in the world could meet.

This is a language problem, not a money problem.

Who pays the premium

A corporate venture investor from a large cement producer told founders to get good at selling at a premium. The first volumes can cost two to three times the commodity price, and the producers will not sign binding offtakes at that level. End buyers building huge projects, the Amazons and Microsofts of the world, will pay, and the producer then blends the material in. Enthusiasm for sustainability for its own sake has gone, the investor said. Unit economics decide, and a technology built on carbon-removal or certificate revenue is an automatic red flag. Liliana said Cemex takes the same view.

Inside the incumbents, incentives point the other way. A corporate investor from outside cement asked who pays when the plant manager, with great power and few reasons to change, decides what goes into the plant. A cement founder who had managed plants said nothing in their bonus criteria rewarded new technology, and their team gave up bonuses to develop carbon capture. The industry rests on nearly free virgin limestone and on fuels that earn gate fees, and questioning either shakes it. Offtake agreements are unheard of in cement, the founder said. A buyer books 100,000 tonnes for next year, takes a fifth more or less, and the price list stays the same until the next negotiation. The founder wanted a green product with no green premium at all. Another investor wanted a brown discount that makes the old product carry its externalities.

Juan saw a chain of buyers standing in the way. Contractors pass quotes up to the owners, who will not put their balance sheets at risk on an unfamiliar material. Liliana said one of a corporate venture unit's main challenges is persuading its own company to take risks, and that it depends on finding the people inside who still push for innovation. Juan saw progress. In 2017 no cap table held both Cemex and Holcim. Now five or six do.

Language or thesis

The investor in the suit said 90 of every 100 companies do not know how to talk to infrastructure capital. What matters is whether a cost-down model is real or PowerPoint, and whether incumbents say they will buy, maybe not today. "This is a language problem, not a money problem," they said. They wanted founders to stop celebrating a first-of-a-kind plant and come back when they had ten. The corporate cement investor agreed about the cost-down curve but said even first plants must sell tens or hundreds of thousands of tonnes. An investor in building materials said nobody wants construction risk. Insurance, credit funds and refinancing could step the risk down until project financiers come in, but the industry has not agreed what proof each of them needs.

Then came the finance chief's list, and the investor's harder thought. "It is possible that we have the thesis wrong," the investor said. If a material has to pass from one buyer to the next with a premium attached, no amount of work will solve it, and money should go where a deal makes sense in two minutes. The investor granted that cement is a huge climate problem. The test for its start-ups is whether they can explain their deal that fast.

This Ripple was hosted by Juan Nieto (Zacua Ventures) and Liliana Cruz (Cemex Ventures) at The Drop 2026 on 16 September.