By 2022, the Apex Brass site housed Zahnrad’s first American plant, employing 340 people. GBP’s initial $2.1 million investment was worth $18 million on paper. But Leo refused to sell.
That was the genesis of . The name stood for “Ground, Brick, and Pipe”—a nod to the unglamorous, tangible assets they planned to acquire: abandoned warehouses, defunct industrial piping, polluted soil, and the forgotten infrastructure of American decline. While every other private equity firm chased SaaS startups and crypto exchanges, GBP went long on rust. gbp ventures llc
Today, GBP Ventures LLC operates out of a converted textile mill in Lowell, Massachusetts—the same building where, in 1832, a different kind of venture capital financed the Industrial Revolution. The firm manages $2.8 billion in assets, owns interests in 94 industrial properties across 18 states, and has never had a down year. By 2022, the Apex Brass site housed Zahnrad’s
The third partner, a soft-spoken former real estate lawyer named David Chen, nodded slowly. “Three hundred K for a million square feet on the river. But the environmental remediation alone will cost five times that.” That was the genesis of