Manufacturing construction in the United States entered territory that most economists hadn’t seen in decades. Real spending on factory-floor projects roughly doubled between late 2021 and mid-2023, and a specific segment drove nearly all of that expansion. Computer, electronic, and electrical manufacturing, long a marginal share of industrial construction, nearly quadrupled in real spending after the start of 2022. By August 2024, total manufacturing construction had reached roughly $240 billion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate.
JP Conte has spent three decades studying those numbers. As managing partner of a San Francisco middle-market private equity firm and founder of Lupine Crest Capital, launched in March 2025, he tracks industrial technology as one of four core areas of focus alongside healthcare, financial services, and software. A recent Dataconomy profile examined why he considers the sector among middle-market private equity’s more durable opportunities right now.
The construction data matters because buildings require software. Every new semiconductor fabrication plant, battery facility, and electronics line carries a digital infrastructure that starts generating revenue on its first operational day. Production scheduling tools, quality-inspection systems, equipment-monitoring platforms, and warehouse management software don’t leave once they’re embedded. That stickiness has a price. Halting production lines and retraining staff to adopt new systems is a cost most plant managers won’t accept, and that calculus is exactly what JP Conte looks for when underwriting a long hold.
The Dataconomy piece also cited the job-announcement data behind the physical building. Companies announced 244,000 manufacturing positions through reshoring and foreign direct investment in 2024. Roughly 88% of those positions were placed in high or medium-high tech sectors: computer and electronics, electrical equipment, transportation. New facilities in those categories are supplied with technology from day one, converting construction activity into years of downstream order flow for factory software and automation hardware vendors.