It’s only been a bit over a month since the start of 2025 past year has witnessed seismic shifts in technology, from breakthroughs in generative AI to emerging solutions in climate tech and healthcare. As we enter 2025, leading investors and accelerators are recalibrating their focus areas to reflect both technological capabilities and urgent global challenges. Drawing insights from ARK Invest’s Big Ideas report, Y Combinator’s Requests for Startups, and market trends, this post explores the most promising opportunities for entrepreneurs looking to make an impact in 2025.
A month ago, I published on VC Cafe the 2025 requests for startups including briefs from Ycombinator, A16Z, Conviction Capital, Stripe, Speedrun and others. This is an extension of the previous list with new sources and startup requests. You can find the 2024 RFS list here.
ARK Invest – Big ideas 2025
ARK Invest’s Big Ideas 2025 report forecasts exponential technological advancements across several sectors.
AI Agents & Software
- Personalised AI Agent Development: Create AI agents that can understand user intent, plan actions, and improve through continuous learning, with a focus on specific verticals like travel, healthcare, or finance.
- AI-Mediated Advertising Platform: Build a platform that leverages AI agents to deliver targeted and personalised ads, capturing a significant share of the digital ad market.
- AI-Powered Digital Wallet Purchasing Agents: Develop AI agents that can interact with digital wallets to facilitate purchasing decisions, moving from “one-click checkout” to “one-query purchasing”.
- AI-Driven Software Development Tools: Create AI agents that can autonomously solve software engineering challenges, monitoring and modifying systems around the clock.
- AI-Enabled Customer Support Platform: Develop a platform that can handle a high percentage of customer support workloads, allowing companies to optimise their workforce for higher-value tasks.
Blockchain & Digital Assets
- Digital Wallet Platform: Develop a user-friendly digital wallet that accommodates the rise of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts and integrates various financial services.
- Stablecoin Yield Optimisation: Create innovative products or services within the stablecoin ecosystem that aim to transfer risk-free rates to users.
- Layer 2 Scaling Solutions: Develop new scaling solutions for blockchains, particularly Layer 2 solutions on Ethereum, that can handle increased transaction throughput and lower fees.
- Decentralised Exchange (DEX) Platform: Build a DEX that can compete with centralised exchanges by leveraging the efficiency of small, agile teams.
- Restaking Platform: Develop a platform that allows users to utilise staked assets for multiple purposes or layers of staking.
- Bitcoin Layer 2 Solutions: Build applications and services on Bitcoin L2s that leverage the Runes protocol for the creation of fungible tokens.
Robotics & Autonomous Systems
- Robotaxi Fleet Management: Develop a platform for managing and optimising robotaxi fleets, focusing on safety and efficiency, with a focus on the US and China markets.
- Autonomous Logistics Solutions: Focus on specific use cases for robotrucks and drones, addressing technical, regulatory, and partnership challenges, in regions like the US and Africa.
- 3D Printing for Manufacturing: Develop 3D printing solutions for industries that require rapid time-to-market, such as drone manufacturing and nuclear power, focusing on areas like nuclear debris filters and submarine parts.
Energy
- Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Development: Develop smaller, scalable nuclear reactors that can meet the near-term demand for clean energy.
- Integration of Renewables and Energy Storage: Create solutions that integrate solar, wind, and battery storage to meet grid dispatch targets.
- Grid Interconnection Optimization: Develop technologies and services to help accelerate the interconnection of new energy generation projects to the electricity grid.
Multiomics & Biotechnology
- Virtual Cell Model Development: Create “virtual cell” models that integrate AI and single-cell genomics to simulate cellular functions and predict responses to perturbations, improving drug discovery.
- Self-Driving Lab for Drug Discovery: Develop self-driving labs that use scalable biology and AI to revolutionize drug discovery, accelerating the process from target identification to clinical trials.
- Multi-Cancer Screening Technologies: Develop technologies that facilitate universal multi-cancer screening, enhancing early detection and improving patient outcomes.
- Data Analytics for Multiomics: Create advanced analytics solutions that can handle the large volumes of data generated by multiomics research, focusing on areas like cancer monitoring and drug development.
Reusable Rockets & Space Technology
- Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite Services: Develop services enabled by low-cost LEO satellites, such as broadband internet and direct-to-mobile device connectivity.
- Hypersonic Flight Services: Develop technologies and services related to hypersonic flight, focusing on leisure travel and other high-speed transportation applications.
Ycombinator’s Spring 2025 Requests for Startups
The Y Combinator “Requests for Startups” (RFS) for Spring 2025 highlights several key areas where they see significant opportunities for new ventures. This new list came just three months after their previous one, due to rapid advancements in AI particularly in areas like computer automation, reasoning models, and infrastructure optimisation.
- A Secure AI App Store: YC is looking for a new kind of AI app store and operating system (OS) layer that prioritises user data protection. This system should allow users to control what data each app can access, offer a shared memory for user details, help users find the best AI apps through reviews and vetting, provide developers with helpful infrastructure, and handle payments. The aim is to create a marketplace that fosters smarter apps while ensuring user privacy.
- Datacenters: There’s a need for more data centers that can be built faster and at a lower cost to support AI infrastructure. YC wants to fund startups that can innovate in areas such as power infrastructure, cooling, material procurement, or project management. The future vision includes software that manages all aspects of data center construction and management, with autonomous robots operating 24/7.
- Compliance and Audit: YC sees a large opportunity to automate compliance and audit tasks using AI. They suggest that LLMs can parse regulatory documents, corporate policies, and financial statements to highlight issues, automate testing, and provide continuous auditing.
- DocuSign 2.0: This request calls for a rethinking of how documents are created and distributed for e-signature using AI. The aim is to create tools that can generate document templates from existing signed documents, auto-fill documents with user information, use voice agents to explain complex terms, and customize document templates to the signer and situation.
- Browser & Computer Automation: YC is interested in startups that can leverage AI agents to browse the web and use desktop applications, turning every website and app into a potential API. This would enable the automation of any computer-based workflow.
- AI Personal Staff for Everyone: YC wants to fund startups that can provide personalized AI assistants to everyone, similar to how software has democratized services previously only available to the wealthy. They believe AI can now perform personalized knowledge work tasks previously done by human staff like tax accountants, lawyers, trainers, and tutors.
- Devtools for AI Agents: There’s a need for tools and infrastructure that help developers build and deploy AI agents, such as agent builders and agent building blocks. YC wants to fund startups that can accelerate the development of AI agents.
- The Future of Software Engineering: YC believes that while AI can write code, human software engineers will still be needed to manage teams of AI agents that build software. They want to fund startups that enable generalist software developers to manage these teams of agents.
- AI Commercial Open Source Software (AICOSS): YC wants to fund startups that offer support and services for open source AI tools, similar to how companies like RedHat and Github have done for other open source technologies.
- AI Coding Agents for Hardware-Optimized Code: YC is looking for founders who can use AI to generate hardware-optimized code, especially for AI hardware alternatives to Nvidia, thereby breaking dependencies and reshaping the hardware ecosystem.
- B2A: Software Where the Customers Will All Be Agents: YC encourages building software and services where AI agents are the primary customers, instead of treating them as an edge case. This includes creating APIs to help agents pay for services, book travel, or engage in contracts.
- Vertical AI Agents: YC wants to fund companies building AI agents that are tuned to automate specific types of work. They note the value of such agents lies in their ability to automate work entirely, rather than just making human workers more efficient.
- Startup Founders with Systems Programming Expertise: YC is looking for founders with deep expertise in low-level systems that can be applied to various startup ideas. This type of expertise allows founders to innovate on the entire software stack.
- Inference AI Infrastructure in the World of Test-Time Compute: YC is interested in startups that can address the increasing infrastructure costs of running AI models at inference time by developing better software, cheaper ways to handle GPU workloads, and optimizations for scaling AI apps.
Pathlight Ventures
Pathlight Ventures joined the trend with its own 2025 Request for Startups, based on the areas they are spending time as a team.
- SMB Results Automation
AI is transforming small business operations through automated tax preparation, insurance claims processing, and accounting workflows. Opportunities exist in field service optimization, healthcare provider automation, and customer engagement platforms that help SMBs achieve enterprise-level efficiency. - SMB Security via MSPs
With remote work becoming standard, SMBs need enterprise-grade security delivered through managed service providers. Focus areas include AI-powered IT management, identity protection, and unified customer management platforms that make security accessible and affordable. - Physical World Observability
Digital monitoring tools have transformed software development, but physical infrastructure lacks similar capabilities. Opportunities exist in creating unified control systems for industrial plants, healthcare facilities, and public infrastructure that can identify, prioritize and remediate issues in real-time. - Healthcare Tech
Healthcare spending continues to rise while administrative burden increases. AI enables new solutions in revenue cycle management, payor-provider workflows, and patient experience optimization. Particular opportunity exists in making fertility services more accessible through technology. - B2B Financial Transparency
Many SMB-dominated industries suffer from complicated payment flows and low trust between parties. Solutions that bring visibility to B2B transactions, accelerate cash flow, and increase trust between participants can unlock significant value across construction, healthcare, insurance, and logistics. - Enterprise Process Automation
Regulated industries like banking, insurance, and government still rely heavily on manual processes. AI agents can now automate complex workflows while navigating compliance requirements, creating opportunities to transform legacy systems without lengthy implementation cycles.
Co Founder and Managing Partner at Remagine Ventures
Eze is managing partner of Remagine Ventures, a seed fund investing in ambitious founders at the intersection of tech, entertainment, gaming and commerce with a spotlight on Israel.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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