A Web Summit Reflection for Anyone Trying To Understand What Is Actually Happening Inside VC Right Now
If you paid attention at Web Summit 2025, you would have noticed something unusual for the tech world. People were not trying to shout over each other. They were listening. The industry that spent the last few years bouncing between hype cycles has finally found a quieter rhythm. And that is exactly why this moment matters.
Venture capital in 2025 feels like a market that has matured without becoming boring. It has become analytical without losing instinct. It has embraced AI without surrendering judgement. And almost every conversation, whether at the main stage or in an unexpected chat at the airport baggage line, pointed to the same truth. Venture has entered a period where clarity beats excitement and where the teams who understand how to adapt will unlock the next decade.
This blog is a deeper dive into what we observed and what the data confirms.
1. The Macro Climate: A Market Catching Its Breath
The best way to describe 2025 is this. Capital is still available but it is no longer chasing noise. Investors are open to new ideas but they expect more substance. The fund managers who spent 2023 and 2024 reorganising their internal processes have come out sharper.
The Web Summit investor survey reflected this transition clearly. A little over one third of investors expect the funding landscape to improve this year. Less than one fifth expect it to get worse. The rest expect a steady environment, which is almost a luxury after the turbulence of the past few years. Investors are not panicking and they are not euphoric. They are simply doing the work again.
The grounding effect shows up in how they allocate. Thirty per cent of investors say the experience of the founding team is the number one factor. A quarter say the strength and scalability of a business model are their leading indicators. Only a small minority prioritise market excitement.
In other words, the story is not enough. The structure must hold.
2. AI Is Not a Sector Any More. It Is the Environment.
There is no polite way to say this. If your product does not use AI meaningfully in 2025, most investors will see you as either uninformed or unserious. Not because AI is fashionable. Because AI has become the foundation on which competitive operational leverage is built.
The investor survey reflected this shift with striking clarity. Nearly 40 per cent of deal value in Europe is now associated with AI. When investors were asked how they use AI themselves, the answers were refreshingly practical. One third use AI to summarise due diligence materials. A little over one quarter use it to identify relevant deals. Others use it to benchmark companies, cross-reference financial models or scan market signals.
Yet investors also spoke openly about their concerns. A quarter are worried about over reliance on automation. A similar proportion worry about data accuracy. Slightly less worry about bias creeping into decision systems. This is where founders often misunderstand the mood. Investors do not want AI to make decisions for them. They want AI to help them understand what deserves their attention. They want a co-pilot, not a replacement.
The strongest AI startups at Web Summit could answer three simple questions. What data gives them advantage. How their system improves with every customer interaction. How they keep human judgement in the loop. Those who could not answer these three questions simply blended into the background.
3. Sector by Sector: What Investors Actually Care About in 2025
Fintech
Fintech is enjoying a quiet resurgence. Not the wild west of the early neobank era, but a more stable and infrastructure focused wave. Investors spoke openly about renewed appetite here. They see opportunities in compliance automation, embedded finance, treasury management and AI assisted risk underwriting. The tone was serious. Not flashy. The fintech investors you meet today want numbers, regulatory clarity and operational credibility.
Climate Tech
Climate tech has strong investor interest but with sharper criteria. Founders who can show realistic cost curves, measurable environmental impact and credible go to market plans attract serious attention. Climate tech is no longer treated as a moral category. It is treated as a commercial category with long time horizons and deep tech constraints.
Deep Tech and Applied AI
This category dominated private sessions at Web Summit. From synthetic data to agentic automation to materials science breakthroughs, deep tech attracted a type of investor who cares about technical talent density and defensible IP. Investors were clear about one thing. Scientific ambition must be matched with execution simplicity. If a founder cannot simplify the science into a crisp commercial narrative, they lose momentum fast.
Future of Work
This category has become more practical. Investors want to see real productivity metrics, not vague promises about collaboration or culture. Products that use AI to reduce operational drag, support decision making or automate complex workflows drew attention. HR tech without measurable value struggled to hold interest.
Consumer
Consumer tech is still alive but expectations are realistic. Investors want to see genuine behavioural insight, strong retention signals and distribution advantage. Virality alone no longer excites anyone. Founders who understand community mechanics and new media platforms stand out more than those who sell novelty.
Infrastructure and Security
With the rise of AI, security is becoming a primary concern. Some investors confessed that many companies have underestimated vulnerabilities created by automation. Startups focused on verification, data lineage, compliance automation and infrastructure reliability gained significant traction.
4. The Behavioural Science of Investors in 2025
A fascinating pattern emerged across conversations. Investors are rediscovering the importance of intuition but they are trying to ground that intuition with more discipline.
Here are the internal levers investors rely on today.
Clarity
Does the founder communicate their idea in a way that reduces uncertainty.
Execution
Does the team have evidence of delivering consistently.
Timing
Is the market ready for this product in the next two to three years.
These three levers come up repeatedly. Conversations with GPs across Europe and the United States echoed the same theme. Vision matters but only when paired with measurable proof of execution. Timing matters but only when explained through specific market signals, not wishful thinking. Intuition matters but only when supported by guardrails.
The founders who stood out were the ones who treated investors as thinking partners, not as judges. They asked smart questions. They showed their reasoning. They admitted what they still need to figure out. This transparency builds trust faster than charisma.
5. LPs Are Becoming More Assertive
LP behaviour in 2025 reflects a very clear shift. They are spending more time evaluating fund processes. They want visibility into deal selection, portfolio management and risk frameworks. Funds that operate without structure are losing momentum.
LPs expect funds to adopt modern tools. They want decision logs, consistent reporting and auditability of reasoning. Some LPs even mentioned that operational maturity is now a more reliable predictor of long term performance than brand recognition.
For GPs, this means the era of intuition only is gone. Investors want a system that makes their thinking visible. This is one reason why the infrastructure layer of venture is becoming the new battleground.
6. Event Behaviour: What Web Summit Really Revealed
The best investors treated Web Summit like a campaign. They arrived with specific agendas. They pre booked meetings. They filtered attendees by thesis. They used the first morning to calibrate their schedule. They moved between curated events, embassy roundtables and invite only sessions.
They did not wander. They did not chase noise. They used the main floor only for discovery, not decision making.
Some of the most meaningful exchanges happened in quieter places. A breakfast at an embassy. A small founder roundtable. A conversation while waiting for a taxi. The strongest founders understood this environment. They did not try to pitch everywhere. They listened. They adapted their story based on real interactions.
Web Summit 2025 proved that serendipity still matters. But it favours those who come prepared.
7. What Founders Should Do Now
The data and conversations point to a simple conclusion. The founders who will succeed in 2025 are the ones who master clarity, execution and timing.
Here is how you can act on this climate.
Learn to explain your idea in ninety seconds
If you cannot do this, investors assume you do not understand the problem deeply enough.
Focus on the next twelve to eighteen months
Clear milestones beat beautiful visions. Investors want to know what you will achieve before the next fundraise.
Show your numbers
Retention, margins, payback periods, conversion rates. Good founders know these without opening a deck.
Do not exaggerate
Investors prefer honest unknowns to overstated strengths.
Explain your relationship with AI
What does AI let you do that was impossible before. How do you maintain human insight while using automation. How do you protect against bias or inaccuracy.
8. Why Infrastructure Will Define the Next Decade of VC
The biggest silent trend at Web Summit was the hunger for structure. Investors want systems that help them think more clearly. LPs want funds that can show their reasoning. Founders want to understand how investors evaluate them.
This is why tools that combine AI with human judgement are emerging. Venture is slowly becoming an intelligence industry. Not a charisma industry. Not a network industry. An intelligence industry built on a combination of structured reasoning and intuition.
The next winning funds will not be the ones with the loudest brand. They will be the ones with the strongest operating system. And the platforms that help them build that system will shape the future of capital allocation.
Conclusion: This Is a Good Moment for Builders
If you are building or investing in 2025, this is an unusually promising moment. The market is calm. The data is clearer. The expectations are more rational. People are willing to engage deeply again.
Venture capital is becoming more thoughtful. More analytical. More transparent. More human. At the same time it is embracing the computational power that AI brings.
This combination creates the perfect environment for tools, companies and founders who understand how to bring structure to intuition. Products that make judgement visible. Workflows that reduce cognitive load. Systems that help people think rather than replacing their thinking.
The next decade will belong to the builders who understand both the art and the science of decision making. And the market has never been more ready for them.