Corporate venture arms in construction: Autodesk, Procore, Trimble, Cemex, Hilti and others

A strategic investor is a company that invests for business reasons as well as financial return: access to a technology, a distribution channel or a future acquisition. For a buyer that can cut both ways. The vendor may get deeper integrations and a larger sales channel, but its roadmap can tilt toward the investor's platform, and a strategic stake is sometimes the first step toward an acquisition. Recent acquisitions below show how quickly a stand-alone tool can become part of a larger suite.

Procore: we did not find a Procore venture fund; its moves are acquisitions. Procore announced on Jan. 20, 2026 that it had acquired Datagrid, with terms not disclosed, and said Datagrid products would be available to both Procore and non-Procore customers. On July 29, 2026 it announced an agreement to buy DroneDeploy for about $845 million in cash, saying it planned to cross-sell DroneDeploy into its customer base, and its Sept. 9, 2026 SEC filing says the deal has closed. DroneDeploy also appears in Cemex Ventures' portfolio.

Autodesk: the Autodesk Foundation describes itself as philanthropic, funding nonprofits and startups through grants and impact investments in energy and materials, health and resilience, and work and prosperity; it is not a commercial venture fund. Autodesk itself said on Feb. 2, 2026 that it made a strategic minority investment in Qflow, a UK company that captures materials and waste data on site, and its construction blog said on March 31, 2026 that Autodesk had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Rhumbix, a field data and timekeeping tool in our directory. We did not find a current Autodesk page for its earlier Forge Fund, so we do not describe that fund as active.

Trimble Ventures says it launched in 2021 with $200 million allocated for strategic investments, backs companies from Series A to Series D, and has supported more than 20 startups; it offers integration with Trimble hardware, software and platforms and access to Trimble's customer base. Trimble Inc. joined Neuron Factory's strategic round announced March 31, 2026.

Bentley Ventures, on a page still titled Bentley iTwin Ventures, describes a $100 million corporate venture fund that co-invests from seed to Series B in digital twin solutions for design, simulation, construction and operation of infrastructure. SewerAI's June 2, 2026 release names Bentley Systems as a continuing investor.

Nemetschek Group, owner of Bluebeam, made a strategic investment in Reconstruct (May 21, 2025) and joined Handoff's $5.8 million strategic round with Masco (announced July 2, 2025). Navitas Capital's portfolio page records that Bluebeam acquired Firmus in 2025.

Suffolk Technologies describes itself as a venture capital platform for construction, architecture, engineering, real estate and infrastructure startups, affiliated with Suffolk Construction. Its portfolio page lists Trunk Tools, nPlan, OpenSpace, Ediphi, Kojo, Higharc, Constrafor, TrustLayer, Outbuild, Trayd, Exodigo, SewerAI, Augmenta, Neuron Factory and Nyfty.ai. It led Trayd's $4.5 million seed (February 2025) and joined nPlan's $16 million Series B (Oct. 17, 2025).

WND Ventures, the venture arm of DPR Construction, lists strategic investments in ALICE, Trunk Tools, Buildcheck, Dusty Robotics, ConstructivIQ, MeltPlan, Wyre AI and Join, among others. Join's Sept. 11, 2025 release says WND Ventures and STO Building Group invested; Wyre AI's seed release names WND as a participant.

Cemex Ventures calls itself the corporate venture capital and open innovation unit of Cemex; its portfolio pages include DroneDeploy and Outbuild. Holcim announced an investment in Cloud Cycle, which puts sensors and machine learning on ready-mix trucks, on Sept. 9, 2026; Holcim's site lists Holcim MAQER Ventures as its venture unit, and Gravis Robotics names Holcim among investors in its $23 million round. CRH Ventures, the venture arm of CRH, announced a strategic investment in Citylogix (pavement condition AI) in January 2026.

NOVA by Saint-Gobain is described as the venture capital arm of Saint-Gobain in an April 22, 2026 release in which it joined a Series B for SOLAR MATERIALS, a glass recycler, so it is active; we did not find a software tool from our directory in what we could read of its portfolio. Hilti Venture, founded in 2018, invests from pre-seed to Series C in robotics, software, AI, IoT, modular construction and sustainability; Hilti says it backed Fieldwire before Hilti Group fully acquired it in 2021, and that it invested in Outbuild.

Caterpillar Ventures says it invests in early-stage autonomy, robotics, AI and analytics, energy and sustainability companies, with typical strategic investments of $2 million to $10 million; its most recent news item is ElevenEs, an LFP battery maker for heavy equipment (February 2026). Komatsu: the activity we could source for 2025 and 2026 is partnerships, such as its Sept. 18, 2025 collaboration with TIER IV and EARTHBRAIN on autonomous construction equipment, not a venture fund page, so we do not list it as an active venture investor.

Several rounds in our tracker include strategic money from customers, suppliers or partners: Wesco International extended Kojo's Series C (Oct. 16, 2025), ABC Supply joined Roofr's Series B (Jan. 28, 2025), Chevron Technology Ventures invested in nPlan and KEWAZO, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures joined Trunk Tools' Series B, NVentures (NVIDIA's venture arm) and Tishman Speyer joined Bedrock Robotics' Series B, SE Ventures (Schneider Electric) and Simpson Strong-Tie are existing Higharc investors, and engineering firms Aurecon and Arcadis became strategic investors in Nomic (Sept. 3, 2026).

These are our suggestions, not findings. Integrations: a strategic investor often means a deeper integration with that investor's platform (Procore says Datagrid works for non-Procore customers too; ask for that in writing). Check whether the integrations you rely on with competing platforms are on the roadmap or quietly frozen.

Roadmap and neutrality: ask whether the investor has a board seat, information rights or a right of first refusal on a sale, and whether your project data is shared with the investor. Bentley's ventures page quotes a portfolio company saying it will keep its neutrality as an independent; ask any vendor to say the same in your contract if neutrality matters to you.

Acquisition risk: Firmus, Datagrid, DroneDeploy and Fieldwire became part of larger companies, and Autodesk has agreed to buy Rhumbix. Before you sign a multi-year deal with a young vendor, agree data export formats, price protection for the term, and what happens to your contract on a change of control. None of this is a reason to avoid strategically backed vendors; it is a reason to read the contract.

This guide describes publicly stated programs and publicly disclosed investments and acquisitions for buyers of construction software. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation of any investor, vendor or security.