The BuiltWorlds 2022 Venture Investors 50 is a list of the most active venture capital firms and strategic corporate funds investing in the built world today. Since 2017, BuiltWorlds has tracked venture deals in the construction and broader real estate ecosystem with a global purview.
This year’s list includes inventors that you may recognize from previous investor lists, but you'll see plenty of newcomers that have emerged in the built-worlds VC space more recently. The intent of this top investors list is to show the breadth of investors in this slow-to-adopt industry and the continued acceleration of innovative financing to develop real-estate tech ventures for years to come.
BuiltWorlds first Venture Investors list was released in 2018 and cataloged only 27 institutional investors. Last year's list, the 2021 Venture Investors 50, identified 151 deals from 368 investors netting ~$14.5B (nearly double the previous year’s activity). In this 2022 list, inclusive of investments over the past 24 months (from December 1st, 2020 to November 30th, 2022,) our research team tracked a total of 524 deals from 1334 unique investment groups.
Representation on this list puts your investment group in the 96th percentile of the private institutional investment community in the built world.
How Was This List Created?
This year’s list was derived by quantifying how active institutional investors have been over the last 24 months. The investment groups that constitute this list are in order beginning with the most active and have participated in the largest number of deals over the last two years in ventures that fall within the BuiltWorlds venture research scope. This list does not factor in criteria such as deal size, deal round, or being a lead investor. In instances where two groups have completed the same quantity of deals, the tiebreaker was awarded to the firm with more recent deal activity.
Want To Learn More About BuiltWorlds Investment Data?
BuiltWorlds venture research tracks deals via primary data collection and publicly sourced deal flow made in the built world ecosystem. Deals include a wide variety of innovative solutions that augment design, estimating, procurement, and construction of vertical & horizontal assets, as well as post-build technologies involved in operations, monitoring, and maintenance of built-world assets.
To see a full breakdown of all the deals tracked within the BuiltWorlds VC ecosystem, a further delineation of where this capital is being put to work, and insights into investment themes and trends, visit the BuiltWorlds Venture Dashboard.
Ranking Methodology
For more information on our methodology click below
1. Fifth Wall
Fifth Wall is the largest venture investment firm in the real estate technology sector, with $3.2 billion in capital commitments from over 100 committed LPs, and has deployed more than $1.78B into BuiltWorlds' venture sphere in the past 2 years.
This built world-accelerating powerhouse began its early-stage investing journey in 2016 with a primary focus on “PropTech” – an increasingly ambiguous term with the rise of construction and infrastructure tech, but seems to now relate primarily to either residential real estate-focused innovation or commercial real estate tech.
Today, Fifth Wall’s flywheel of investments has expanded deep into the world of ConTech as the necessity of vertical integrations across the real estate sector becomes increasingly apparent with each new siloed solution that is implemented. Over 1/3rd of the Fifth Wall deals BuiltWorlds tracked were related to residential real estate, while construction tech represents a meaningful part of this pure-play built-world VC’s investment thesis. Infrastructure tech has been a growing theme within Fifth Wall’s strategy with many of these solutions being sustainably empowered.
2. Brick & Mortar Ventures
Focused exclusively on venture capital opportunities in “technology for the built world,” Brick & Mortar Ventures identifies, backs, and enables emerging companies developing innovative software and hardware solutions for the industries of architecture, engineering, construction, and facilities management. Its hyper-focused mandate allows Brick & Mortar to continuously develop industry expertise and relationships across these large and growing verticals and build value to its portfolio by taking a hands-on, active role as an investor and partner to its companies.
3. Tiger Global
Tiger Global Management, LLC is an investment firm that focuses on private and public companies in the global Internet, software, consumer, and payments industries. Tiger Global's objective is to generate superior risk-adjusted returns for our investors over the long term.
4. Foundamental
Foundamental is a global venture capital firm investing in construction, mining and renovation technology. They believe in making these industries autonomous and clean with technology and science. They are backed by some of the world’s largest construction and materials companies, giving us privileged access to deep sector knowledge across markets.
5. MetaProp
MetaProp is a New York-based venture capital firm focused on the real estate technology (“PropTech”) industry. Founded in 2015, MetaProp’s investment team has invested in 100+ technology companies across the real estate value chain. The firm manages multiple investment funds for both financial and strategic real estate investors representing a pilot- and test-ready sandbox of 15+ billion square feet across every real estate asset type and global market.
MetaProp's investment activities are complemented by pioneering community leadership including MetaProp Accelerator at Columbia University programs, global events NYC Real Estate Tech Week and MIPIM PropTech NYC, and publications Global PropTech Confidence Index and PropTech 101.
6. Insight Partners
Insight Partners is a global software investor partnering with high-growth technology, software, and Internet startup and ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. As of February 24, 2022, the closing of the firm’s recent fundraising, Fund XII, brings Insight Partners’ regulatory assets under management to over $90B. Insight Partners has invested in more than 600 companies worldwide and has seen over 55 portfolio companies achieve an IPO.
Headquartered in New York City, Insight has offices in London, Tel Aviv, and Palo Alto. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Insight Partners meets great software leaders where they are in their growth journey, from their first investment to IPO.
7. Blackhorn Ventures
Blackhorn Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in companies using breakthroughs in engineering and science, coupled with the infrastructure of the Information Revolution, to redefine resource productivity.
Billions of people are moving toward a higher standard of living, and global consumption is rapidly depleting Earth’s resource capacity. Blackhorn is in a unique period of history that will be defined by investment in resource-efficient technologies.
8. Breakthrough Energy Ventures
Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) is dedicated to helping humanity avoid a climate disaster. Through investment vehicles, philanthropic programs, policy advocacy, and other activities, BEV us committed to scaling the technologies we need to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
9. Ironspring Ventures
Ironspring Ventures is a sector focused, early stage VC firm investing in innovative founders catalyzing change across the industrial supply chain. We lead and co-lead early stage investments, specializing in construction, manufacturing, transport & logistics, and alternative energy.
Co-founded and managed by GPs with deep industrial and venture experience, Ironspring adds differentiated value through our network of premier industrial operating companies and subject matter experts.
10. JLL Spark
JLL Spark is dedicated to transforming the real estate industry through technology-based innovation. JLL Spark provides the nimbleness of a startup backed by JLL’s expertise and resources. Led by experienced Silicon Valley entrepreneurs with successful track records building and investing in tech companies, JLL Spark’s strategic proptech investments offer JLL the ability to provide innovative products to real estate owners and operators. JLL Spark was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
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11. Suffolk Technologies
Suffolk Technologies is a venture capital and innovation platform investing in and partnering with startups transforming the built environment. We back early and growth stage technology companies across the building lifecycle, including construction, architecture and engineering, and real estate. With our broad network of job sites and industry partners, we accelerate new solutions to ecosystem-wide adoption.
12. CEMEX Ventures
Launched in 2017, CEMEX Ventures focuses on addressing the evolving pain points across the construction industry, bringing to life sustainable solutions.
At CEMEX Ventures, we have put in place an open and collaborative platform to lead the evolution of the construction industry by engaging startups, entrepreneurs, universities, and other stakeholders to tackle the construction world’s toughest challenges and shape tomorrow’s value ecosystem.
13. Khosla Ventures
Khosla Ventures provides venture assistance and strategic advice to entrepreneurs working on breakthrough technologies. The firm was founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. With over $15b assets under management, the firm focuses on a broad range of areas including consumer, enterprise, education, advertising, financial services, semiconductors, health, big data, agriculture/food, sustainable energy and robotics. Khosla Ventures is headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif.
14. 8VC
8VC aims to transform the technology infrastructure behind many industries. 8VC partners with elite founders to build transformational technologies that create long-term economic and societal value.
15. Building Ventures
Building Ventures invests in and mentors early-stage startups in the built environment. The firm’s mission is to champion the disruptive ideas in construction and real estate tech that transform the way we design, build, operate, and experience our physical world. Headquartered in Boston with an office in San Francisco, the BV team consists of investors, entrepreneurs, and built environment veterans working together for a better built world.
16. Camber Creek
Camber Creek is a venture capital firm providing strategic value and capital to operating technology companies focused on the real estate market. Camber Creek contributes in a direct and significant way to the success of its portfolio companies by leveraging the real estate expertise, operating experience, and portfolio of assets of its partners, investors, and advisors.
This management team has investing, operating, and technology experience and expertise across a range of real estate businesses, including construction, property management, development, and leasing. Camber Creek's LPs own, operate, and manage billions of square feet of real estate in the U.S., giving us a unique competitive advantage as an investor and value-added partner in the real estate technology space.
Camber Creek has ~$1bln AUM.
17. RET Ventures
Real Estate Technology Ventures (RET Ventures) is the first industry-backed early stage venture fund focused on helping build cutting-edge real estate technology companies for the multifamily industry. The Firm connects the smartest rent tech solutions with the largest network of multifamily and single-family rental units in North America. RET Ventures works with high-quality entrepreneurs to rapidly scale their businesses by leveraging the knowledge and expertise of its team and limited partners, who own close to one million units. In turn, these owners receive early access and insight into the most effective technology solutions.
18. A/O Proptech
Europe’s leading Built World VC firm. Real Estate & Data Technology expertise combined with unique access to a sandbox of over $40bn of Real Estate assets from selected LPs. Stage agnostic, investing permanent capital to support entrepreneurs & companies from Series A to later-stage growth.
This EU VC enables founders to create, iterate and scale disruptive products and platforms by leveraging our unique access to large RE owners and managers, corporates, governments, and industry stakeholders. A/O helps its portfolio companies navigate the complexities of the real estate ecosystem through our long-established industry network.
19. Energize Ventures
Energize is a leading climate software investor. The VC partners with best-in-class innovators to accelerate the sustainability transition.
Founded in 2016 and based in Chicago, Energize is backed by LPs who represent world-class institutional, strategic, impact, and family office investors. The firm leverages its team's deep industry and operational expertise to guide our research-based investment approach and support our portfolio companies in scaling and realizing their full potential, from early commercialization to the public markets.
20. FJ Labs
FJ Labs, Inc. operates as a venture capital firm. The Firm focuses on investments in the e-commerce and mobile software industries. FJ Labs invests globally.
This investment group decides whether we invest or not based on two 60-minute calls over the course of a week or two. FJ Labs do not lead and does not take board seats. In other words, FJ invests at any stage, in any geography, or in any industry with extremely limited due diligence.
21. Founders Fund
Founders Fund is a San Francisco based venture capital firm investing in science and technology companies solving difficult problems. The firm invests at all stages across a wide variety of sectors, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, energy, health and consumer Internet. The firm and its partners have been early backers of some of the most impactful companies of the past decade, including Airbnb, Facebook, Palantir and SpaceX. Founders Fund pursues a founder-friendly investment strategy, providing maximum support with minimum interference.
22. Menlo Ventures
Menlo Ventures provides capital for seed through growth technology companies in the consumer and enterprise sectors. For decades, the firm’s market-driven research analysis has led to the identification of and successful exits in innovative technology markets. Notable research areas of investment include Mobile (Siri, Uber, TeleNav), Enterprise Storage (3PAR, Spinnaker Networks, Coraid), Communications (Acme Packet, Cavium Networks), and Consumer (Fab, Tumblr, Carbonite, Roku).
Founded in 1976, Menlo’s portfolio includes 70 public companies and more than 100 mergers and acquisitions. Throughout the firm’s history, Menlo’s deep network of portfolio entrepreneurs, angels and advisors are a key resource made available to all of our family of investments. Menlo Ventures has $4 billion under management and is currently investing Menlo Ventures XIV, a $450 million fund.
23. GroundBreak Ventures
GroundBreak Ventures™ is the venture capital arm of Hopewell, specializing in real estate and property technology. The firm invests as early as the pre-seed stage and provides both the capital and the domain expertise necessary to support the growth of our entrepreneurs and the businesses they work tirelessly to build.
24. Energy Impact Partners
Energy Impact Partners LP (EIP) is a global venture capital firm leading the transition to a sustainable future. EIP brings together entrepreneurs and the world’s most forward-looking energy and industrial companies to advance innovation. With over $2.5 billion in assets under management, EIP invests globally across venture, growth, credit, and infrastructure – and has a team of over 70 professionals based in its offices in New York, San Francisco, Palm Beach, London, Washington D.C., Cologne, and Oslo.
25. Builders VC
Builders VC is a team of over 35 operators who’ve worked together for over a decade successfully scaling dozens of venture-backed companies. The investment group's track record of success includes leading companies such as Bower & Wilkins, Bolt Threads, Skybox, Context Relevant, Climate Corp, Udemy, and Sprout Social.
26. Shadow Ventures
Shadow Ventures is a venture capital firm focused exclusively on technology that drives innovation in the built environment identifying burgeoning startup opportunities at the earliest stages of development.
27. SE Ventures (Schneider Electric)
SE Ventures is a 1 billion EUR venture capital fund based in Menlo Park, CA created in close partnership with Schneider Electric. SEV provides risk capital to big ideas and bold entrepreneurs who can benefit from Schneider’s energy and industrial expertise, global reach, and ready customer access.
28. Y Combinator
Y Combinator (YC) is a startup fund and program. Since 2005, YC has invested in nearly 3,000 companies including Airbnb, DoorDash, Stripe, Instacart, Dropbox, and Coinbase. The combined valuation of YC companies is over $300B. YC has programs and resources that support founders throughout the life of their company. Startup School teaches the basics of starting a company.
The YC batch program helps founders as they build their products, talk to their customers, and raise funding. Working at a Startup makes it easy for founders to find their first engineers. YC Series A helps founders launch their A round. YC Growth Program provides founders with resources to scale their companies and hire an executive team, and YC Continuity invests in their later stage rounds.
29. NOVA (Saint Gobain)
Saint-Gobain’s venture arm is dedicated to fostering partnerships w/ startups in construction products, advanced materials & environmental sustainability.
With a presence in North America, Europe, Asia and South America, NOVA connects the global startup community with the power, resources, and experience of Saint-Gobain, one of the world’s largest building materials companies and manufacturers of innovative material solutions, addressing the needs of today and challenges of tomorrow.
Since 2006, we have helped create more than 150 partnerships for transformative innovation with startups in various stages and in various forms, including co-development, licensing, commercial agreements, direct investments, and joint ventures. NOVA is also a limited partner in a number of global funds.
NOVA serves as a bridge, working collaboratively with startups to provide them with access to Saint-Gobain’s internal resources and support to form long-term partnerships. Rooted in trust, expertise, support, and flexibility, we assist entrepreneurs whose areas of focus align with our expertise in order to help them succeed.
30. SoftBank
SoftBank Group Corp. is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Tokyo.
31. NEA
NEA partners with founders to turn big ideas and bold aspirations into the products, services and solutions that shape the future. With four decades of investing experience and more than $20 billion in committed capital, we’ve helped build nearly 600 successful businesses, resulting in more than 230 IPOs and 390 acquisitions, across sectors, stages and geographies. We are investors; but we are also technologists, inventors, operators, physicians, researchers, marketers, and yes, even entrepreneurs. We bring these disciplines together under one global fund, united by a shared passion for innovation and collaborative culture.
32. ABB Technology Ventures
ABB is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 150,000 people.
33. Andreessen Horowitz
Founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz (known as “a16z”) is a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, California that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. We are stage agnostic: We invest in seed to late-stage technology companies, across the consumer, enterprise, bio/healthcare, crypto, and fintech spaces. a16z has over $10B in assets under management across multiple funds, including the $1.4B Bio funds, the $350M Crypto fund, and the Cultural Leadership Fund.
34. Navitas Capital
Navitas Capital is a venture capital firm focused on transformative real estate technology and innovation. A trusted and tenured team that brings clarity, insight, and transformative opportunities to our portfolio companies and investors.
35. BoxGroup
The goal at BoxGroup is to invest at the earliest stage. Early stage fundraising has taken on many names— friends & family round, pre-seed, seed, etc. and this firm is open to all of them. BoxGroup is comfortable with what early means— a lot of assumptions, more vision than traction, and raw product. This investment group believes that technology can be a catalyst for positive change and progress. They look for entrepreneurs working at the beginning of movements in existing markets, or new markets yet to be created, and with visions to create the next generation of category-defining businesses.
36. Signia Venture Partners
Signia Venture Partners is a unique early-stage venture fund dedicated to helping passionate entrepreneurs build impactful, world-changing, and iconic companies. Signia’s team is made up of proven entrepreneurs with a track record of success and experience at every stage of growth and with a hands-on approach to technology investing. This innovative approach includes their successful founder/investor program and dedicated resources for their portfolio such as the latest technology platforms, in-house recruiting and marketing services, access to experts and strategic partners, and events designed to educate and inspire.
37. Lennar Corporation
38. Global Founders Capital
Global Founders Capital is a globally oriented, stage-agnostic venture capital firm that empowers gifted entrepreneurs worldwide.
- Global - supporting founders in all geographies
- Stage-agnostic - not bound by investment stage or check the size
- Operational - providing the right support to the right founders with its bottom-up generalist investment strategy
39. National Grid Partners
National Grid Partners (NGP) is the venture investment and innovation arm of National Grid plc. NGP makes and manages strategically and financially attractive investments and leads company-wide innovation efforts. The organization focuses on corporate venture capital, incubation, business development and innovation, providing a multi-functional approach to change the status quo. NGP is based in Silicon Valley with offices and team members in Los Gatos, San Francisco, Boston, London, and New York.
40. BDC Capital
BDC Capital (Business Development Bank of Canada) exists to help turn great ideas into great companies. BDC exclusively invests in Canadian innovation to help this "under-served" market compete with Silicon Valley's best-capitalized industry pioneers. The firm currently has more than $3B in assets under management, over 200 portfolio companies, and 7 direct investment funds.
41. Alpaca Ventures
Alpaca VC is a early-stage venture capital firm based in New York that believes that layering technology over daily life transforms how the real world works. So Alpaca invest in the people, products, and processes that power commerce in the physical world.
Led by a diverse team of company builders, operators, and analytical thinkers, Alpaca has developed a repeatable playbook to help its entrepreneurs most efficiently progress from Seed to Series A.
42. Tishman Speyer
Tishman Speyer is comprised of real estate owners, operators, developers, and fund managers. They are innovators and big thinkers. They’ve been in the business since 1978, and have collaborated with hundreds of companies to acquire, develop and operate nearly $89 billion of property value, including over 170 million square feet of office, retail and residential space in key cities around the world.
This leading real estate investment group launched its first PropTech fund in March 2022 with $100M to put towards early-stage building tech startups.
43. Zacua Ventures
Zacua Ventures is a global early-stage venture fund tackling the world's biggest challenges across Sustainability, Productivity and Urbanization and backed by the most innovative corporates in the built world.
Zacua is led by partners with more than 30 years of combined industry experience and who have been investing in construction tech for the past decade.
With regional presence in San Francisco, Madrid and Singapore, Zacua helps entrepreneurs to build and strengthen their value proposition and scale their businesses globally, leveraging deep corporate networks.
44. Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital helps founders turn imaginative ideas into enduring companies. As the “Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs,” the Sequoia team has worked closely with legendary founders such as Steve Jobs of Apple, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner of Cisco, David Filo and Jerry Yang of Yahoo!, Max Levchin, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel of PayPal, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley of YouTube, and Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn. Sequoia is now helping the next generation of innovators build the lasting companies of tomorrow.
45. 2150
2150 backs mission-driven tech entrepreneurs who are solving some of the largest problems facing the planet today. 2150 focuses on the full stack of the urban environment where most of the world’s CO2 emissions and resource waste is arising and which will double in the next decades.
46. Taronga Group
Taronga Ventures invests in emerging innovation, technology and business models shaping the future of the built environment. They offer direct venture investment, as well as programs and advisory services to support the growth of their portfolio companies and their impact on the traditional real estate sector.
Taronga strives to provide innovative and creative solutions that deliver lasting value for their investors, their investments and the communities in which they invest.
Taronga has extensive experience across global markets and asset classes and is supported by strategic and institutional partners across Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
47. Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. With more than 135 IPOs and 200 portfolio companies in the enterprise, consumer and healthcare spaces, Bessemer supports founders and CEOs from their early days through every stage of growth. Bessemer’s global portfolio has included Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, Yelp, LinkedIn, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Wix, Fiverr, and Toast, and has more than $20 billion of assets under management. Bessemer has teams of investors and partners located in Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Boston, Beijing and Bangalore.
48. Lightspeed Venture Partners
Lightspeed Venture Partners is a multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise, Consumer, Health, and Fintech sectors. Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped build more than 500 companies globally including Affirm, Carta, Cato Networks, Epic Games, Faire, Forty-Seven, FTX, Guardant Health, Mulesoft, Netskope, Nutanix, Rubrik, Sharechat, Snap, TripActions, Udaan, Ultima Genomics and more. Lightspeed and its global team currently manage $18B across the Lightspeed platform, with investment professionals and advisors in the U.S., China, Europe, India, Israel, and Southeast Asia.
49. Dysruptek
Haskell Corporate Venture Capital Arm. Investing in disruptive architecture, engineering, and construction technologies reshaping the built world.
Dysruptek identifies strategic investments in early-stage technology companies with solutions to address the major challenges facing the AEC industry. The group strives to grow innovation by piloting new technologies on Haskell projects and conducting research and development of new products from manufacturing to the jobsite.
50. Zeev Ventures
OTHER TOP 50 LISTS
Methodology
The ranking of BuiltWorlds 2022 Venture Investors 50 cohort is determined by the level of activity these investment groups have been involved in over the last 24 months.
Ranking factors in order of importance:
- Investments are made within BuiltWorlds Venture Scope (outlined below)
- The number of participating venture deals between 12/1/2020 - 11/30/2022
- Ties are broken by the most active investors of recent quarters
BuiltWorlds Venture Scope
BuiltWorlds Ventures tracks deals via primary data collection and publicly sourced deal flow made in the built startup ecosystem. Innovative solutions that augment the design, engineering, material/equipment procurement, and construction of vertical & horizontal assets, to post-build technologies involved in the operations, monitoring, and maintenance of built-world assets.
BuiltWorlds Venture team examines and provides actionable insights into early-stage ventures addressing mission-critical issues across the lifecycle of built worlds assets, for a comprehensive understanding of venture activity in real-time.
To see a full breakdown of all the deals tracked within the BuiltWorlds VC ecosystem, and a further delineation of where this capital is being put to work (investment themes & stages broken out by quarter), take a look at BuiltWorlds Venture Dashboard.
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