A wave of new factories is rising across the United States, and with it a quieter surge in the machines and software that make them run. Jean-Pierre Conte has tracked that shift for years. He sees durable opportunity in the technology layer underneath it.
Conte is a longtime private-equity investor who now leads the family office Lupine Crest Capital, and he keeps his focus on the middle market. His interest lands on the companies that supply factories with the tools they can’t operate without, from scheduling systems to equipment monitoring.
The Return of American Manufacturing
Production has been coming home. Some 244,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs were announced in 2024 through reshoring and foreign direct investment, the Reshoring Initiative reported, part of a multiyear push to build more on domestic soil. Each announcement points to new plants, new lines and new equipment.
Robots are arriving to staff them. North American firms ordered 31,311 units worth $1.963 billion in 2024, the Association for Advancing Automation found, with double-digit growth in food, consumer goods and life sciences. Conte reads that buildout as the foundation for years of follow-on demand.
Technology Tied to the Machines
New equipment doesn’t run itself. It needs software to schedule work, inspect output and watch for failures, plus service contracts that keep going long after installation. That trailing demand is what draws Conte to the sector, because it produces revenue that recurs instead of revenue that ends with a single sale.
Those contracts also stick. Once a plant depends on a system to keep its lines moving, dropping it gets risky, and the supplier keeps billing across the life of the machinery. Conte counts that reliability among the sturdier features in the whole industrial economy.
A Layer Made for Long Ownership
The pattern rewards patience, which is how Conte prefers to invest. He backs businesses that customers keep paying because the factory depends on them, and then he holds long enough for the steady income to compound. A supplier woven into daily operations rarely loses the account.
Momentum in the sector should carry that story forward. Each reshored plant and each new robot widens the base of equipment that needs software and service, and the suppliers serving it pick up new customers without a fight for every sale. Jean-Pierre Conte expects reshoring and robotics to keep generating the recurring contracts he values most. None of it rides on a single blockbuster deal. It’s a slow, broad current, and he’s content to ride it for years.
