Zacua Ventures Closes $135M Fund II for Physical Industries

A cement plant gives a venture investor a different kind of product tour. At CURA Climate, the proposed improvement starts before the kiln, where the company is developing a way to separate process carbon dioxide while preserving the surrounding production system. That concern for what stays in place helps explain the industrial investment territory Zacua Ventures is expanding into with its second fund.

Zacua announced its $135M Fund II close on November 10, 2026. The global early-stage manager is extending its construction experience into energy, mining, manufacturing, housing and critical infrastructure, with physical AI, robotics and alternative materials among its priorities. The amount describes capital committed to the fund vehicle, separate from financing raised by any portfolio company.

For industrial founders, the useful part of that expansion reaches beyond another source of investment. Zacua brings corporate relationships into the work of understanding how an invention will be evaluated, integrated and bought. Its broader mandate carries the same practical question into more industries: how much of the customer's existing operation can a new technology work with?

A larger fund with construction experience behind it

Zacua was established in 2022 and announced the close of its $56M first fund in February 2024. That earlier vehicle concentrated on productivity, sustainability and urbanization across the built environment. Its corporate LP base already connected venture investing with companies that made equipment, supplied materials and operated within construction.

Fund II is more than twice that debut vehicle's size. Zacua reports that the new fund was 35% oversubscribed and attracted more than 30 corporate and institutional investors across more than 20 countries. Those figures describe the manager's fundraising announcement; they give no basis for calculating investment returns or the capital still available to deploy.

The founding partnership remains central to the expansion. Zacua's current team page identifies Mauricio Tessi Weiss as Founding Partner for Europe and Latin America, Juan Nieto as Founding Partner for Europe and Asia-Pacific, and Vivin Hegde as Founding Partner for North America. Their regional responsibilities give the global mandate identifiable people behind it, rather than leaving geography as a line in a fund description.

The firm's investment thesis connects technical capability with knowledge of the industries being served. Carrying that approach into mining or energy means learning how a different operator defines acceptable performance. A construction relationship can provide a starting point, while the requirements of the next industrial customer still deserve their own investigation.

The corporate LP can understand the customer's objection

The Fund II announcement names Volvo Group Venture Capital, Holcim Maqer Ventures, Hilti Venture, Trimble Ventures, Acciona, DPR Construction, Mortenson and Dubai Future District Fund among its backers. Each is identified as a fund participant. The release does not designate a lead LP or disclose individual commitment sizes, so the roster should be read as a set of relationships rather than a ranking of financial influence.

For an early-stage industrial business, those relationships can make a product conversation more exact. A potential customer may care about compatibility with equipment already purchased, the training required for a new process, or the support available when something goes wrong. A founder who encounters those questions during development can bring a more useful proposition into the later purchasing discussion.

That is the commercial appeal of putting industrial expertise beside venture capital. Zacua describes its corporate network as a way to connect founders with customers, partners and operating knowledge. Access can help a team find the right evaluator and understand the conditions under which an evaluation would be meaningful. The purchasing authority remains with the customer, and the announcement promises no automatic contracts.

There is also a practical consequence for the corporate participant. Working near a young company can create an earlier view of the changes that company is attempting. The useful exchange runs in both directions: founders learn which operating constraints matter, while established businesses can examine an unfamiliar approach before deciding where it might belong in their own operations.

Cement, robotics and software inside one mandate

Zacua identifies CURA Climate, Origin Robotics and Neuron Factory among Fund II's early investments. The examples span cement decarbonization, construction robotics and AI-based preconstruction work. They make the wider mandate concrete without requiring every portfolio company to sell the same product or follow the same path to adoption.

CURA's own technology description puts existing industrial assets inside that investment logic. The company says its process is designed to separate carbon dioxide upstream of the cement kiln and integrate into existing facilities while producing industry-standard cement. CURA describes a development path through laboratory validation and pilot deployment. Its design intentions should be understood at that stage, without treating them as evidence of universal commercial performance.

The operating appeal is straightforward. Preserving a customer's plant configuration changes the scope of the decision that customer has to make. An improvement that fits part of an existing process can be evaluated differently from a proposal that requires replacing the production system around it. The engineering remains consequential, and so does the amount of change being asked of the buyer.

For Zacua, grouping these businesses under physical industries directs attention toward the setting in which technology earns its place. Software can help coordinate construction decisions; robotics can perform work in that environment; materials technology can change an industrial process upstream. Fund II gives the partnership a larger vehicle for pursuing those opportunities. As its reach extends beyond construction, the next useful introduction may be to the person who knows exactly which part of a mine, factory or energy operation can accommodate the change.