Beyond the Pilot Who Will Finance the Future?
The hosts:
Juan Nieto, Zacua Ventures
Liliana Cruz, Cemex Ventures
What is this Ripple about?
Electric kilns, carbon capture, low-carbon clinker substitutes to novel chemistries, there is no shortage of promising pathways to decarbonize cement and concrete. The bottleneck isn't innovation. It's earning trust, securing capital, and navigating an industry built to resist change. Moving breakthrough technologies from pilot to industrial scale means overcoming stringent standards, conservative practices, and significant capital requirements. For founders, building the technology is only half the challenge. Scaling it is the real test. So how can emerging players earn the trust of regulators, customers, and investors—and ultimately scale their solutions beyond the pilot stage? Corporate venture capital can provide industrial expertise, long-term capital, access to infrastructure, and real-world testing environments, while venture capital brings speed, scale-up expertise, and powerful network effects. Together, can these complementary models unlock the next generation of low-carbon cement technologies and accelerate one of the world's hardest industries to decarbonize?
Why this topic timely or urgent in 2026
Concrete built the modern world—but it now sits at the center of one of climate's biggest challenges. Cement production is responsible for nearly 8% of global CO₂ emissions, and unlike many other sectors, most of these emissions are inherent to the chemical process itself. This makes cement one of the most difficult industries to decarbonize.
The encouraging news is that innovation is no longer the limiting factor.Today, startups are rethinking cement production from multiple angles — novel chemistries, carbon capture, electrified kilns, alternative binders. Yet few of these technologies reach industrial scale. Scaling requires navigating high capital requirements, conservative customers, qualification standards and the challenge of proving reliability at full scale.The question is no longer whether we can decarbonize cement. It’s whether the right capital structures and partnerships are in place to get them there.
Key questions or challenges being explored
The state of play: overview of the main approaches to decarbonize cement
How CVC and VC capital play different — and complementary — roles in moving startups from pilot to scale
From pilot to industrial scale: financing first-of-a-kind deployments and overcoming the capex challenge in heavy industries
The key tension or debate at the heart of this discussion
Who would get the most value from attending this Ripple?
Anyone interested or involved in the cement / concrete industry (such as CVC leads or executives at cement companies), investors in decarbonization (such as climate tech funds) ideally pursuing heavy-industry decarb, and founders of companies in the green cement space. We invite anyone who wants to learn and discuss about making concrete more sustainable to join the forum.