Investment trends are constantly evolving, influencing the strategies of venture capital firms and the opportunities available to startups. To explore what’s shaping the investment landscape in 2025, we are hosting a roundtable discussion with professionals from VC companies. In this session, experts will share their perspectives on key focus areas for the year ahead, the industries attracting the most attention, how economic conditions are impacting funding strategies, and what founders should know to navigate the evolving investment climate.
Our experts:
Janneke Niessen, Co-Founder at CapitalT
Enis Hulli, General Partner at e2vc
Igor Ryabenkiy, Managing Partner at AltaIR Capital
Tomasz Kościelniak, Investment Associate at SMOK Ventures
Yuriy Romanyukha, Managing Director at ICLUB
Zuzana Ondrejová, Principal at J&T VENTURES
Matteo Moscarelli, Deal Flow Manager at United Ventures
Jack Pearson, Investor at GALLOS Technologies Limited
Daria Reutovich, COO at ULTRA.VC
Jedrzej Brozyna, Investment Analyst at Inovo.vc
Idil Dorsan, LP at Arya Ventures;mStartup Mentor at Tech Istanbul
Lukas Punzet, Investment Manager at aws Gründungsfonds
Pavel Prata, Investor Relations Manager at R136 Ventures
José Luis de Cachavera, COO at Startupxplore
Janneke Niessen, Co-Founder at CapitalT
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
At CapitalT, our primary investment focus in 2025 remains on ClimateTech and the Future of Work - two sectors that are not only rapidly evolving but are also critical for long-term resilience and economic growth.
In ClimateTech, we believe now is the time for Europe to show its strength. With a strong innovation ecosystem and a policy environment that, despite challenges, still prioritizes sustainability, Europe has the opportunity to lead in the global green transition. Investing in climate solutions today is no longer just about impact - it’s about staying competitive. Companies that fail to integrate sustainability will struggle to survive in the long run, while those that drive innovation in areas like carbon removal, energy efficiency, and circular economy solutions will be the ones shaping the future economy.
At the same time, the future of work continues to be a major focus for us. AI-driven automation, new workforce dynamics, and shifting workplace expectations are redefining how businesses operate. We’re particularly excited about solutions that help companies adapt to these changes - whether by enabling more flexible work models, improving workforce productivity with AI, or addressing the growing need for skills development. Companies that rethink how they attract, retain, and empower talent will be the ones that thrive in the next decade.
Ultimately, we invest in the companies that are building for a future where sustainability and economic success go hand in hand.
Enis Hulli, General Partner at e2vc
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
AI adoption is hitting in waves; content, entertainment, media, code... Every quarter brings new industries into the fold, creating windows for well positioned companies to scale to tens of millions in revenue within months. This momentum isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
Igor Ryabenkiy, Managing Partner at AltaIR Capital
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
Our primary investment focus this year remains on fintech, AI, and productivity tools with AI, particularly those impacting the USA, Israel, and Western Europe. We’re particularly excited about the continued evolution of generative AI, especially in its applications for automating business processes and transforming industries like finance, healthcare, and enterprise software. We also see enormous potential in AI-driven tools that enhance human decision-making and improve operational efficiency.
We believe 2025 will be a pivotal year for these sectors, and we’re eager to back startups that are pushing the boundaries in these areas.
Tomasz Kościelniak, Investment Associate at SMOK Ventures
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
Although we are a generalist investor our attention is now more focused on AI in the broadest sense, as it is undeniably a tectonic shift in the world of technology. As an investor navigating the AI hype it's crucial to focus on real-world, practical business solutions with demonstrable, bottom-line impact. I prioritize startups with strong teams and technical depth that leverage AI as a true differentiator rather than a superficial add-on. I also prefer to consider niche AI applications addressing operational efficiency in underexplored sectors rather than generic solutions which don't really solve any meaningful problems.
I think that cybersecurity solutions will certainly gain in importance in 2025, as the advancement rapid of generative AI is creating both - opportunities, but also a new sophisticated threats. Also on my radar are devtools that use AI to automate work in many different business applications, as well as game development, which is undergoing of an evolution in terms of the game creation process.
Yuriy Romanyukha, Managing Director at ICLUB
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
The ICLUB angel syndicate, founded by Viktoriya Tigipko's TA Ventures fund, focuses on five main areas:
- Fintech
- Deeptech
- Health and Biotech
- D2C
- Enterprise Tech
In addition, we see prospects in robotics, Digital Health (with AI personalisation), and the use of AI in software.
Zuzana Ondrejová, Principal at J&T VENTURES
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
1. Generative AI (AI Agents) - we see a huge trend in Service as a Software meaning, that AI will not only replace manual repetitive tasks but will be gradually replacing the more complex services (lawyers, consultants, analysts). As many generative AI startups will form hype but disappear later, the role of AI agents will be more and more important in everyday life.
2. Cybersecurity - cybercrime will be the largest threat for business in upcoming years and till now many companies haven't admitted it, but with the increasing number of cybercrimes, they will invest more money into protecting their valuable data. Thus any product offering encryption technology, detection technology, or infrastructure hardening can become a unicorn given the relative underpenetration of such products in the market.
3. Enterprise SaaS - although the SaaS investments have been trendy for several years, we don't see this trend declining. The main reason is that however many enterprises underwent digitalization, still, their adaptation to the latest technologies is quite slow and enterprises will invest a lot of money to innovate their product offers. And what kind of SW product enterprises will be seeking? Mainly must-have products that will enable them to differentiate from the competition and form an essential part of their own products. Such SW startups will create a strong vendor lock and the best position to be later acquired by any of their large enterprise customers.
Matteo Moscarelli, Deal Flow Manager at United Ventures
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
At United Ventures, we remain generalists — while maintaining a prepared mindset and strong investment theses in Deep Tech, Software, and Fintech.
Within Deep Tech, on the software side, we primarily focus on cybersecurity and AI. We believe that AI’s value will shift towards the application layer and that the AI market will be able to take a significant share of the service market. In 2025, we aim to support companies driving this transition across all industries. On the hardware side, we concentrate on AI infrastructure, particularly components that optimize data centers in terms of size and energy efficiency.
In Software, we continue to seek vertical SaaS solutions that drive digital transformation in traditionally non-digitized industries such as construction and manufacturing. We generally prefer B2B SaaS over B2C companies, but if a B2C business can demonstrate strong virality and sustainable growth without relying on excessive marketing spend, we are always open to a conversation. Naturally, we expect most software companies have already incorporated AI or they will do it in the coming years.
In Fintech, we are actively exploring opportunities in the payments sector, which we believe remains outdated and with too many intermediaries involved. We see room for innovation in vertical payment solutions tailored to specific use cases, such as checks for real estate transactions. We are also interested in treasury management solutions for SMEs, an area rife with inefficiencies and untapped potential. Lastly, we believe the insurance industry still has significant room for innovation.
In conclusion, as a people-first VC, we have our own investment theses — but we also believe in leaving room for serendipity in our investment approach. We look for bright, visionary individuals who challenge the status quo and show us how their ideas can become reality. If that sounds like you, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.
Jack Pearson, Investor at GALLOS Technologies Limited
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
1) AI Governance & Security
Advances in generative AI have made it an essential technology for enterprise organisations to the extent that it is not a competitive advantage to deploy AI, but a competitive disadvantage not to deploy. We therefore expect adoption across the board over the next eighteen months. However, adoption comes with challenges that organisations need to overcome to gain comfort in deployment.
Organisations are using their own data for model training, either during finetuning (for frontier models such as Chat GPT and Claude), or pre-training (for proprietary models). This may include employees’ personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive company data. Strong governance is therefore required to ensure outputs do not leak this data and nefarious actors cannot penetrate the training data pool.
Other issues include bias in training data, data poisoning and hallucinations – all of which hinder model performance via erroneous or partial outputs. Add to this the wave of regulation rippling across markets, and businesses – large and small – face a dilemma in adopting the very technology they will require to remain competitive.
The market therefore requires solutions that enable robust, transparent, and secure development of generative AI that enables AI adoption with minimal risk. These are key focus areas for GALLOS in 2025.
2) Third Party Risk Management
More security breaches are identified by benign third parties than by internal security teams or revealed by the attackers themselves, demonstrating the interconnected nature of modern business.
Software supply chains, cloud platforms and applications all contribute to a modern organisation’s operations, but they also create exposure risk. Other businesses now have access to an organisation’s data, networks and systems, meaning breaches outside of one organisation’s environment can penetrate those systems and proliferate. In fact, breaches from business partners or the supply chain are typically both more costly and take longer to contain than breaches that begin in a business’ own environment.
Technologies that can assess and monitor attack surfaces, perform threat intelligence on partner businesses, and automate defences against potential breaches stemming from their environments are exciting to GALLOS.
Daria Reutovich, COO at ULTRA.VC
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
This yea is particularly exciting due to investing in sectors that drive technological innovation while ensuring security, efficiency, and scalability. AI continues to evolve, with a major focus on multimodal AI and AI agents, especially in personalization for retail and healthcare. Semiconductors remain a strategic investment area around the globe, given their critical role in AI acceleration and industry cloud infrastructure, especially in banking and secure tech.
As technology becomes seamlessly integrated into consumer experiences, ensuring trust and security is paramount. Decentralized platforms, including blockchain-driven secure decision-making, are gaining traction, particularly in finance. At the same time, ethical AI and reskilling are becoming essential as businesses demand professionals who can navigate complex AI models, data ecosystems, and business strategies while driving innovation.
Additionally, defense tech, cybersecurity, and regulatory-driven innovations are key areas where we see substantial growth potential.
While everything is moving digital, the challenge remains: Are we mentally ready for it? Our investments focus at ULTRA.VC is on solving this gap by enabling frictionless, secure, and future-proof technologies that will positively impact human resilience, mental & physical health and overall quality of life.
Jedrzej Brozyna, Investment Analyst at Inovo.vc
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
The areas I’m most excited about as a venture capital investor this year are:
- Real-world applications of AI. Foundational models are improving at an unprecedented pace, with open-source models on the rise and the cost of compute continuing to decrease - similar to how cloud storage costs dropped years ago. This opens the door for entirely new layers of AI applications to solve real-world problems, including - but not limited to - consumer robotics.
- Manufacturing, defense tech, and aerospace. With growing international tensions, a rise in protectionism and reshoring, the retraction of globalization, increasing energy demand from data centers, coupled with the declining cost of space launches, there’s a huge opportunity for startups capitalizing on these trends. Notable examples include Anduril, which recently announced the development of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System for the US Army, and Boom, a startup that developed the first-ever civilian aircraft to break the sound barrier. The good old days of industrialization are making a comeback!
- Products with network effects. As the cost of compute continues to decrease and code generation tools gain popularity, the marginal cost of software development will effectively approach zero. This shift means that technology itself will no longer be a long-term defensible moat. Instead, companies will need to focus on other forms of defensibility, which will come from product and distribution. Network effects will play a crucial role in building lasting competitive advantages.
Idil Dorsan, LP at Arya Ventures; Startup Mentor at Tech Istanbul
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
My investment thesis focuses on early stage/series A tech startups with at least one woman in their founders team. I invest into startups vetted by Arya Ventures (aryawomen.com). I’m typically drawn into deep tech and any new tech that brings innovation. I also look for fast deployment, low cost and international expansion potential of the companies I consider. Aside from being a LP in Arya Ventures, I have also angel invested in biotech and healthtech, and I am looking into further diversifying my portfolio. In 2025, the sectors that will attract my attention will be verticals like fintech, paytech, renewable energy, energy efficiency and cybersecurity. But we can never really predict things, as the limitless creativity in tech continues to surprise us with all kinds of unheard solutions, and for that, I prefer to cultivate a growth mindset and be open to anything exciting!!
Lukas Punzet, Investment Manager at aws Gründungsfonds
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
Given the rapid advancements in LLMs and AI more broadly, this is a technology we are actively monitoring. We are particularly intrigued by how startups can leverage AI as a commodity technology to uncover hidden optimization and growth opportunities within the enterprise sector. This is especially true for the industrial tech space as well as climate tech, where AI can play a pivotal role in driving efficiency, sustainability, and long-term competitive advantage.
Pavel Prata, Investor Relations Manager at R136 Ventures
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
While I'm not directly involved in investment decisions, my conversations with many GPs and LPs provide a valuable perspective on the trends and areas generating excitement in the VC market for 2025.
For those seeking a continuous pulse on emerging VC interests, I highly recommend following Y Combinator's 'Requests for Startups,' which offers insights into their evolving focus areas.
But based on my observations, here are several key areas are capturing significant attention:
- AI Applications and AI Agents: We're seeing a surge in interest in AI that moves beyond simple assistance to autonomous decision-making. Areas like secure AI app stores with user-controlled data, AI personal assistants for everyday tasks, and browser/computer automation are particularly compelling. The ability for AI agents to interact with any website or application unlocks a vast range of new use cases. As YC notes, “Letting AI agents use the web is like taking a brain in a jar and giving it hands. It can now do things." This has amplified addressable use cases for AI agents by tenfold.
- Web 3.0 and Blockchain Applications: Despite past skepticism, blockchain and cryptocurrency are gaining legitimacy, particularly in finance. The U.S. is adopting a more favorable stance, paving the way for broader adoption. Expect growth in stablecoin adoption for cross-border payments and advancements in asset tokenization, potentially unlocking new levels of liquidity. “In 2025, crypto will enter a new era of legitimacy, reshaping asset management and financial practices globally.” BlackRock’s Bitcoin Spot ETF and Stripe’s $1.1B acquisition of Bridge are examples setting the stage for broader adoption.
- FinTech: The FinTech landscape is poised for a rebound in 2025, with a focus on efficient, sustainable growth. Open banking initiatives in the US are expected to supercharge competition and innovation by shifting data ownership to consumers. According to the CFPB’s final rule for open banking, “Data ownership will shift from financial institutions to consumers, putting the power to choose in the hands of individuals." This is expected to boost consumer fintech innovation.
- BioTech: The adoption of healthcare AI experienced a meteoric rise in 2024, and this trend is set to continue. AI-driven augmentation is poised to reshape the entire healthcare experience, from care delivery and administration to consumer empowerment. In fact, healthcare is rethinking the industry through the lens of AI-driven augmentation.
- DevTools and Infrastructure: The rise of AI agents necessitates robust development tools. This includes platforms for building and deploying custom agents, as well as tools and APIs that enhance agent capabilities. Addressing the infrastructure demands of AI, particularly data centers, is also critical. As Diana Hu and Dalton Caldwell from YC emphasize, “We need more data centers that can be built faster and at a lower cost to support the infrastructure needed for AI progress." Hyperscale datacenter projects take years to complete, creating an opportunity for innovative solutions.
Overall, the VC market in 2025 is characterized by a move towards practical AI applications, the increasing legitimacy of blockchain, and a focus on efficiency and innovation across various sectors. The year of collaborative transformation, where startups and corporations partner to leverage data and technology, will be a key theme.
José Luis de Cachavera, COO at Startupxplore
What are your primary investment focuses this year, and are there any particular sectors or technologies you’re especially excited about in 2025?
We are agnostic about the sector or technology, but we focus on Spanish Startups, innovative, light in structure, with high potential, and that know how to make efficient use of resources.