A few years ago, most brain-computer interface stories felt like science fiction: glossy videos, bold promises, very long timelines. Serious investors tended to file BCI under "defence projects and Big Tech experiments" rather than something a focused deeptech fund should underwrite. It was easy to put neurotech in the "fascinating but too far out" bucket.

On slides, hydrogen has been "the future" for a long time. Most climate decks had an electrolyser, a pipeline and a green molecule somewhere in the corner. In practice, a lot of the capital and talent went into software, offsets and light-touch climate tools, while big industrial projects stayed in pilot mode.

Industrial robots are no longer reserved for large automotive manufacturers. With over 4.66 million units installed worldwide and annual installations exceeding 500,000 for the fourth consecutive year, warehouse robotics and factory automation have become standard infrastructure across industries.

For a long time, quantum lived in the "too early" folder: dense physics, uncertain timelines and pitch decks that read like grant proposals. As an engineer, the ambition was exciting; as a fund, it was hard to see where the product and the revenue would come from, or when.

Healthtech in Europe sits at an awkward intersection. As an engineer, you see enormous inefficiencies and rich data. As an investor, you hit fragmented reimbursement, local clinical practice and a long tail of niche indications. For a generalist fund, a lot of companies end up in the "great team, wrong fund" bucket.

For a long time, logistics and transport in Africa were treated as someone else's problem: state-owned companies, truckers and informal networks somehow kept things moving. Tech founders often complained about logistics in every board meeting, then treated it as a side note in their own models.

During COVID, African healthtech attracted a wave of urgency and donor attention. It was natural to back apps and telemedicine pilots and assume ministries, NGOs or insurers would eventually pay for scale. The reality is more constrained: health budgets are tight everywhere, and out-of-pocket spend across the continent is limited.

African climate tech is no longer a subcategory of development budgets. Across energy, agriculture, and construction, dedicated capital and venture-building support are moving proven pilots to thousands of deployed units, leapfrogging Western infrastructure entirely and starting closer to net-zero by design.

African fintech is entering an infrastructure phase. After a cycle dominated by consumer apps and neo-banks, durable value is now accruing to the teams building the settlement, risk, identity, and treasury rails that every other sector depends on.

European deep tech is shifting from research output and patent filings toward large-scale sovereign infrastructure in energy, compute, health, and defence. Recent analysis suggests that scaling Europe's deep tech engine could generate around $1 trillion in enterprise value and up to one million jobs by 2030.

European ClimateTech is moving from feel-good pilots to asset-backed infrastructure in energy, farming, and construction. In 2024 alone, European ClimateTech companies raised around €25bn in disclosed debt, signaling that project finance and venture capital now sit side by side in this category.

Running low on cash is one of the loneliest moments in a founder's journey. You've poured everything into your startup, and suddenly the numbers stop adding up. So know this: you're not failing. You're facing a hard patch, and there are tools built specifically to help you through it.