The AI startup market is vast; From companies that want to develop new chips; AI users to build robots; It extends to others who want to use AI to create better solutions for industry-specific workflows. There are many potential areas for venture capitalists to invest in, but it's clear that there are a few sub-sectors that they're more excited about than others.
TechCrunch recently A survey was conducted. 20 VCs investing in startups looking to sell to businesses: their predictions for 2025
Mark Rostick, vice president and senior managing director of Intel Capital, told TechCrunch that now that the large base models have been built — at least in his opinion — another interesting area to invest in is AI solutions for specific tasks.
“We see models that excel at particularly interesting functions, especially when combined with agents built on top of them,” Rostick said. “As AI adoption accelerates, application-focused companies will take center stage as CEOs look for more ways to leverage AI in specific areas that deliver tangible, transformative impact.”
Mike Hayes, managing director at Insight Partners, echoed this. He added that companies that build products that use AI to reduce friction in the economy will be pushed back.
“We're looking for ways to solve unique challenges for businesses — where traditional solutions fall short,” Hayes said. “This includes vertical and person-specific workflows reshaped by GenAI or agent automation and security innovations.”
VCs interested in going after companies that target specific business cases must ensure that these startup solutions are actually companies, not features. Otherwise, 2021 may see a repeat of the SaaS boom; A lot of companies that actually have a single note have raised venture capital before. remains. When enterprise budgets are contracted in 2023, preference is given to companies offering platform solutions.
There are tasks that are important enough to warrant a single-function solution. For SaaS, Overwhelmingly, we hear that businesses are still paying for companies that offer standalone cybersecurity solutions. For AI, It's unclear at what point businesses will be willing to pay for the solution. Ed Sim, founder and general partner of Boldstart Ventures, recognized this challenge.
“The trick is to figure out where the puck is going to be, and is this a feature or a product or a business,” Sim said.
Another area VCs are excited about is reliability and resilience. Jason Mendel, an investor at Battery Ventures, said he looks to invest in companies in areas of visibility and credibility. Liran Grinberg, co-founder and managing partner of Team8, also lays out his views on what he calls “enterprise resilience.”
“The Crowdstrike software update incident showed how damaged our digital world is not just by cyber attackers, but by mistakes,” Grinberg said. “By design we need digital infrastructures that are more resilient and less fragile.”
AI infrastructure will continue to be a hot area of investment in 2025. Along with the growth in AI agents, VCs cited the infrastructure needed to deploy the technology to businesses, as well as companies that can calculate the price for AI agents. .
“It's still very early days here, and I believe the momentum for AI infrastructure will continue through 2025, especially with the proliferation of agent frameworks, new model (including reasoning) development, edge AI advances, and evolving UI/UX of AI applications (including computing),” said Janelle Teng, vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners.