green-building
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The Cement Startup That Stopped Trying to Replace Concrete - and Learned to Sneak Algae Into the Mix
Prometheus Materials spent years teaching microbes to make stone. Its more consequential trick was learning that the concrete industry did not want a revolution - it wanted a familiar bag of powder that could survive the batch plant.
Meritage Homes
The Scottsdale builder made energy efficiency standard equipment instead of a luxury upcharge - and used it to close more than 15,000 homes a year.
Epic Cleantec
Epic Cleantec is a San Francisco cleantech company that builds onsite water reuse systems for buildings, letting towers and campuses recycle up to 95% of their own wastewater into clean non-potable water, recovered heat energy, and organic soil products. Its OneWater platform installs treatment in the basement so showers, sinks, and laundry water get reused on site instead of flushed to a distant plant. The company got famous for turning recycled building water into commercial beer, and it counts high-rise developers as its core customers.
Tangible
Tangible is a San Francisco climate-tech company that turns static construction drawings and 3D models into live materials data. Its AI-powered platform reads Revit models and PDF drawings to give preconstruction teams structured quantities, cost, and EPD-backed embodied carbon in one place - so developers, contractors, and architects can see the carbon and cost impact of a design and cut both before a building is ever poured. Founded in 2021 by Anneli Tostar and Nicole Granath, Tangible has raised roughly $8.8M and counts builders like Skanska, Prologis, and Hensel Phelps among its users.
Rudolph and Sletten
Rudolph and Sletten is a California-based general contractor that has built much of Silicon Valley's physical fabric - from Apple Park and Lucasfilm's Skywalker Ranch to hospitals, research labs and university campuses. Founded in 1959 in a Los Altos garage, the firm pioneered guaranteed-maximum-price, fast-track delivery and grew into one of the West Coast's largest builders of technically complex healthcare, life-sciences and education projects. Now a subsidiary of Tutor Perini, it employs roughly 740 people and reports about $307 million in annual revenue.