Highlights from Untapped Ventures’ 2026 Annual General Meeting
- George Bandarian
- Mar 23
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 24
Untapped Ventures hosted its 2026 Annual General Meeting on March 7th, bringing together a growing community of LPs and founders to mark the transition from AI to the Autonomous Economy and the opportunities ahead.
Owning the Autonomous Economy
This year’s AGM, held at the Portofino Hotel & Marina in Redondo Beach, brought together nearly 100 LPs, founders, and partners for a deep dive into where AI is going next - and how we’re positioning around it.
What emerged from the day wasn’t just an update.
It was a clear shift.
For the last few years, the conversation has been about AI - models, copilots, and tools.
Now, it’s about something bigger.
The Autonomous Economy.
From AI-Native to AE-Native
At this year’s AGM, we introduced the evolution of our thesis:
We’re no longer just investing in AI-native startups.
We’re investing in AE-native companies.
The Autonomous Economy (AE) is the next phase of this technological cycle - where agents and robots don’t just assist humans, but execute work end-to-end and transact within defined systems.
This changes everything.
We’re moving from:
Software as a tool → software as labor
Human workflows → autonomous pipelines
Headcount-constrained businesses → compute-scaled organizations
And with that shift comes an entirely new stack.
One where orchestration, permissions, auditability, and coordination - the control plane of autonomy - become as critical as the models themselves.
This is where we’re focused.
Fund I: Proving the Engine
Before looking ahead, we grounded the conversation in what’s already working.
Fund I has now:
Invested in 35 companies, including 20 follow-on investments
Built exposure across agentic systems, compute, models, and applied AI
Backed early breakout candidates including Harper, Extropic, and Lemurian Labs
We’ve seen firsthand that venture outcomes still follow a power law - but in AI, that curve is compressing.
Companies are scaling faster. Markets are forming earlier. And the winners are emerging sooner.
The takeaway is simple:
This isn’t luck. It’s an engine.
Our sourcing flywheel, founder selection, and hands-on support - particularly around GTM - have created a repeatable system for identifying and backing top-tier AI founders early.
The Next Wave: Where Value Will Accrue
A major focus of the AGM was answering a question we hear often:
If AI was the first wave… where does value accrue next?
Our view is that the biggest opportunities sit across four layers of the AE stack:
Autonomy Control Plane Identity, permissions, policy, auditability, and governance systems for agents
Autonomous Workforce Layer Task routing, orchestration, marketplaces, and coordination across agents and robots
Autonomous Applications Industry-specific systems replacing human workflows end-to-end
Enabling Infrastructure Models, compute, robotics, and data systems powering everything above
Most investors are still focused on models or surface-level applications.
We believe the real opportunity is in the systems that make autonomy deployable, reliable, and economically viable.
Founder Panels: The Future in Production
The highlight of the AGM was once again hearing directly from our founders - this year organized under the Autonomous Economy lens.
These weren’t theoretical conversations. They were real operators, building and shipping.
Agentic Systems Panel
Harper • Nexxa • Sluicebox
Founders from Harper, Nexxa, and Sluicebox shared how agents are already moving beyond demos into production systems with real ROI.
Kasim Abdullahi (Head of GTM, Harper), Philipp Wehn (Co-founder & CEO, Nexxa), and Sarah Tang (Founder & President, Sluicebox) discussed what it actually takes to deploy agentic systems in the real world.
Key themes included the shift from copilots to fully autonomous workflows, the importance of deep domain expertise, and the emergence of agent-driven service delivery models.
Harper, for example, is building an autonomous insurance brokerage - replacing entire workflows, not just augmenting them.
Compute Panel
Extropic • BlueQubit
If autonomy is the future, compute is the bottleneck.
Guillaume Verdon (Founder & CEO, Extropic) and Hayk Tepanyan (Co-founder & CTO, BlueQubit) explored the next generation of compute - from thermodynamic systems to quantum advantage.
The discussion focused on new paradigms beyond traditional GPUs, the physical limits of current infrastructure, and how breakthroughs in compute will unlock entirely new categories of AI applications.
The consensus: Compute is destiny - and the next breakthroughs will reshape the entire AI stack.
Convergence Panel
Liquid AI • 3Laws Robotics
This panel highlighted a major shift:
Mathias Lechner (Co-founder & CTO, Liquid AI) and Andrew Singletary (Co-founder & CEO, 3Laws Robotics) discussed the move toward efficient, on-device intelligence, the convergence of AI and robotics, and the growing importance of safety and control layers as autonomy scales.
We’re moving from “chatbots” to systems that act in the real world.
Longevity Panel
ANI • Radicle Science • EON Systems
One of the most exciting applications of the Autonomous Economy is in health and longevity.
Bruno Balen (Founder, ANI), Jeff Chen (Co-founder & CEO, Radicle Science), and Michael Andregg (Founder, EON Systems) explored how AI is enabling earlier detection, personalized interventions, and entirely new approaches to understanding human biology.
From cardiometabolic health to large-scale clinical validation and even mind uploading, the panel offered a glimpse into a future where disease can be detected - and potentially prevented - decades earlier.
This category is still early - but the impact could be massive.
Community as a Competitive Advantage
One of the most consistent pieces of feedback we heard:
“There’s nothing else like this.”
At Untapped, community isn’t a side benefit - it’s part of how we operate. Our AGM reflects that. It’s not just a presentation - it’s a working session between investors, founders, and operators, and that same dynamic carries throughout the year.
With nearly 100 LPs - many of them experienced founders and executives - our network becomes an extension of each company we back. What truly sets us apart, though, is how hands-on we are.
We don’t just provide capital - we work closely with founders throughout their journey, partnering with them as they build, iterate, and scale.
In many cases, we’re in the trenches alongside founders - helping turn early momentum into real outcomes, and building a community that actively contributes to each company’s success.
What Happens Next
If 2024–2025 was about AI adoption…
2026 and beyond is about autonomy.
Agents and robots will increasingly:
Execute workflows
Coordinate systems
Transact economically
The question is no longer if this happens.
It’s:
Who will build - and who will own - the infrastructure behind it?
Join Us
The 2026 AGM reinforced our conviction:
We are still early.
At Untapped Ventures, we’re focused on backing the founders building the Autonomous Economy - and continuing to partner closely with our community as this next wave unfolds.
If you’re a founder building in AE, we’d love to connect.
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