To understand the future, one must look at the past. As technology continues to change faster and faster, AI is dramatically changing the technology stack, and as global giants grow into multi-vertical players, it is becoming increasingly challenging to predict which early-stage domains will mature successfully and spawn global companies.

We can, however, learn from past trends in early stage rounds, and when we examined the highest-raising early-stage domains for 2015 and compared them with those of 2018, we found that:

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  1) Security, AI/ML and Analytics & Big Data REMAINED STRONG.
They were strong verticals for early-stage investments 3 years ago and remain so in 2018. Part of the reason for this is that AI continues to drive innovation in traditional areas (such as Agritech, Transcription or HR-tech) and Security continues to flourish as new threats continue to surge.		  
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  2) Cloud PLATEAUED.
The decrease in Cloud investments (down 37%) suggests that this domain has plateaued (including cloud service providers), due to the maturity of the sector and increased competition from the cloud giants.		  
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  3) Mobility FLOURISHED.
Mobility, which was in its very early steps in 2015, almost tripled its volume (from $62M to $183M), but we anticipate this momentum will turn a corner as the ecosystem eventually comprehends that commercialization of technologies for AV is a long, gradual process.		  
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Domains that raised more, less and similar early-stage investments in the past 3 years

Early stage investment areas that kepy momentum
Click to enlarge