[
 {
  "box": "codereview",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "CodeRabbit ($143m C, $1.5bn); Greptile ($50m B, $750m); Qodo ($70m B); Anthropic, OpenAI Codex, Cursor Bugbot+Graphite, Copilot",
  "wedge": "Independent, model-agnostic behavioural verification of agent-written code (tests, runtime, repeat runs) plus a neutral review-quality benchmark and calibration of when to stay silent.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "TNW: CodeRabbit $143m",
    "url": "https://thenextweb.com/news/coderabbit-raised-143m-to-read-the-code-ai-wrote"
   },
   {
    "title": "InfoQ: Claude Code Review",
    "url": "https://infoq.com/news/2026/04/claude-code-review"
   },
   {
    "title": "RuntimeWire: Greptile $50m B",
    "url": "https://runtimewire.com/article/greptile-raises-50m-series-b-at-750m-valuation"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "reliab",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Braintrust ($80m B, $800m); LangChain ($1.25bn); Patronus ($50m B); LMArena ($1.7bn); Princeton CITP research",
  "wedge": "Runtime verifier and recovery layer that raises effective pass^k on a fixed model for one workflow; research on methods that raise consistency and replay-proof benchmarks.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Towards a Science of AI Agent Reliability",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/html/2602.16666v1"
   },
   {
    "title": "Beyond pass@1 (arXiv 2603.29231)",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29231"
   },
   {
    "title": "The Deep Feed: agent eval startups",
    "url": "https://www.thedeepfeed.ai/posts/2026-06-25-agent-eval-startups-metric-nobody-trusts/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "datarights",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "RSL Collective (RSL 1.0); CLA and CCC collective licences; Cloudflare 402; labs via settlements (Anthropic $1.5bn)",
  "wedge": "Training-corpus acquisition-provenance audit (proving no pirated copies) and licence-registry tech for collective bodies; research on payment-grade training-data attribution.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: Anthropic $1.5bn settlement approved",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/20/anthropics-landmark-1-5b-copyright-settlement-is-approved/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Media Copilot: RSL 1.0",
    "url": "https://mediacopilot.ai/rsl-licensing-standard-hits-1-0-gains-support-from-1500-publishers/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Nieman Lab: AI licensing double bind",
    "url": "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/05/the-emerging-ai-content-licensing-market-puts-news-publishers-in-a-double-bind-a-new-report-warns/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "robotdata",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 1,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Skild (~$1.4bn, $14bn+); Physical Intelligence ($600m B, $5.6bn); Generalist ($3bn); NVIDIA GR00T; DeepMind",
  "wedge": "Not another robot brain: real-world evaluation-as-a-service and data curation tooling that scores which trajectories improve a policy, on open GR00T and pi0 weights.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "AI Weekly: physical AI H1 2026",
    "url": "https://aiweekly.co/node/10331"
   },
   {
    "title": "Implicator: PI nears $1bn round",
    "url": "https://www.implicator.ai/physical-intelligence-nears-1-billion-round-doubling-valuation-in-four-months.md"
   },
   {
    "title": "NVIDIA GR00T",
    "url": "https://developer.nvidia.com/isaac/gr00t/llm-info.md"
   }
  ]
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 {
  "box": "teleop",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "xDOF ($70m A, ~$50m ARR, ~$1.2bn talks); Mecka; micro1; Scale AI Physical AI; Mercor; NVIDIA Isaac Teleop",
  "wedge": "Software for robot-data buyers: operator-quality scoring and pricing a trajectory by its marginal policy gain; or teleop-in-production where the paid task funds the data.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "SiliconANGLE: xDOF $70m",
    "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2026/06/17/robotic-teleoperation-data-startup-xdof-launches-70m-funding/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Dealroom: xDOF nears $1.2bn",
    "url": "https://dealroom.co/news/149061-xdof-nears-1-2b-series-b-just-months-after-70m-series-a/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Scale AI: physical AI",
    "url": "https://scale.com/blog/physical-ai"
   }
  ]
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 {
  "box": "memory",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Mem0 ($24m); Engram ($98m); Cognee ($7.5m); Zep; Letta; AWS, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic memory services",
  "wedge": "Provable forgetting: deletion and lineage that cascade to every derived memory, with GDPR evidence; plus task-scored memory evaluation and compiling remembered preferences into runtime checks.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "arXiv 2512.13564: Memory in the Age of AI Agents",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.13564"
   },
   {
    "title": "OpenAI Memory FAQ",
    "url": "https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8590148-memory-faq"
   },
   {
    "title": "TRACE (arXiv 2606.13174)",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.13174v1"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "adopt",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Distyl ($175m B, $1.8bn); AuxoAI ($20.7m A); Accenture FDE practice; OpenAI, Anthropic, Google FDEs; Palantir",
  "wedge": "Productise forward-deployed work: mine agent and human traces into a redesigned back-office workflow with its skills and evals, where NANDA finds the best ROI.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Fortune via Yahoo: MIT NANDA 95%",
    "url": "https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mit-report-95-generative-ai-105412686.html"
   },
   {
    "title": "Crunchbase News: Distyl $175m",
    "url": "https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/distyl-raises-valuation-175m-seriesb/"
   },
   {
    "title": "FM Magazine: McKinsey State of AI",
    "url": "https://www.fm-magazine.com/news/2025/nov/transformation-focused-companies-are-outpacing-others-in-ai"
   }
  ]
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 {
  "box": "traces",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Braintrust ($800m); Langfuse (ClickHouse); LangSmith; Arize ($70m C); OpenPipe (CoreWeave); Magma (YC); CopilotKit CLiF",
  "wedge": "Trace-to-regression-test-to-fix loop: turn a customer's own traces into evals, skills and small-model fine-tunes, linking observability to correction propagation.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "SiliconANGLE: Braintrust $80m",
    "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2026/02/17/braintrust-breaks-80m-series-b-funding-round-become-observability-layer-ai/"
   },
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: CoreWeave buys OpenPipe",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/03/coreweave-acquires-agent-training-startup-openpipe/"
   },
   {
    "title": "YC: Magma",
    "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/magma"
   }
  ]
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 {
  "box": "autocoder",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 1,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 2,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI/Cursor (>$3bn ARR, SpaceX $60bn deal); GitHub Copilot; Mercor ($10bn, data)",
  "wedge": "Only picks and shovels: contamination-free coding evals, RL environments and expert task data that labs buy from outside.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "AI Futures Q2.5 2026 update",
    "url": "https://blog.aifutures.org/p/q25-2026-timelines-update-uplift"
   },
   {
    "title": "Wikipedia: Anysphere",
    "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anysphere"
   },
   {
    "title": "The Deep Feed: agent eval startups",
    "url": "https://www.thedeepfeed.ai/posts/2026-06-25-agent-eval-startups-metric-nobody-trusts/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "aiuplift",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "METR; AI Futures Project; Epoch AI; P-Zero Research; Mercor ($10bn); Weco AI ($8m seed)",
  "wedge": "A neutral third party that labs trust to measure internal, research-level and organisation-level uplift, closing the ~40pp self-report vs RCT gap.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "METR: AI usage survey 2026",
    "url": "https://metr.org/blog/2026-05-11-ai-usage-survey/"
   },
   {
    "title": "AI Futures Q2.5 2026 update",
    "url": "https://blog.aifutures.org/p/q25-2026-timelines-update-uplift"
   },
   {
    "title": "IEEE Spectrum: recursive self-improvement",
    "url": "https://spectrum.ieee.org/recursive-self-improvement"
   }
  ]
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 {
  "box": "identity",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2.5,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Keycard ($38m); Oasis (Cyera ~$1bn); Okta/Auth0; Microsoft Entra Agent ID; WorkOS ($2bn); 20+ funded NHI vendors",
  "wedge": "Protocol-edge components: delegation chains (user to agent to sub-agent to tool), cross-registry verification and machine-speed revocation, as reference implementations.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "IDSync: State of AI agent identity 2026",
    "url": "https://idsync.com/reports/state-of-ai-agent-identity-2026"
   },
   {
    "title": "Pulse2: Keycard $38m",
    "url": "https://pulse2.com/keycard-launched-with-38-million-to-transform-identity-and-access-for-ai-agents/"
   },
   {
    "title": "handsontek: Agent 365 GA",
    "url": "https://m365admin.handsontek.net/?p=20935"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "embod",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 1.5,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Figure ($39bn); Skild ($14bn+); PI; NEURA (~$7bn); Apptronik (~$5.3bn); NVIDIA GR00T; DeepMind Gemini Robotics",
  "wedge": "Physical-AI safety and assurance layer: independent real-world eval fleets, runtime failure detection and certification-oriented testing (weakly evidenced, no startup found).",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Tech Funding News: humanoid funding",
    "url": "https://techfundingnews.com/top-humanoid-robot-startups-2026-funding/"
   },
   {
    "title": "NVIDIA GR00T",
    "url": "https://developer.nvidia.com/isaac/gr00t/llm-info.md"
   },
   {
    "title": "Gemini Robotics 1.5",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.03342"
   }
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 },
 {
  "box": "air",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Recursive ($650m, $4.65bn; $410m AWS); Ricursive; Sakana AI and UBC; DeepMind AlphaEvolve; NeoCognition ($40m)",
  "wedge": "Neutral evaluation of AI research ability (research taste, replication) and oversight of automated-research loops; narrow AI-improves-AI loops with automatic scoring.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Pulse2: Recursive $650m",
    "url": "https://pulse2.com/recursive-650-million-raised-at-4-65-billion-valuation-for-self-improving-ai-research/"
   },
   {
    "title": "IEEE Spectrum: recursive self-improvement",
    "url": "https://spectrum.ieee.org/recursive-self-improvement"
   },
   {
    "title": "AI Futures Q2.5 2026 update",
    "url": "https://blog.aifutures.org/p/q25-2026-timelines-update-uplift"
   }
  ]
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 {
  "box": "audit",
  "crowding": 2.5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Microsoft Agent 365/Purview; OpenAI+Promptfoo; Zenity ($125m C); Geordie ($30m); Datadog via OTel GenAI; Keycard",
  "wedge": "Cross-organisation, tamper-evident signed action receipts bound to a delegation chain, emitted as OTel GenAI traces and packaged as EU AI Act or ISO 42001 evidence.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Zylos: agent accountability and audit trails",
    "url": "https://zylos.ai/research/2026-03-22-ai-agent-accountability-audit-trails-attribution-multi-agent-systems/"
   },
   {
    "title": "OpenAI to acquire Promptfoo",
    "url": "https://openai.com/blog/openai-to-acquire-promptfoo"
   },
   {
    "title": "OTel GenAI semantic conventions",
    "url": "https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/semconv/gen-ai/"
   }
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 {
  "box": "licensedmedia",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Disney-OpenAI ($1bn); WMG-Suno, UMG/WMG-Udio; WMG bought Sureel; Spotify-UMG; Vermillio; Musical AI",
  "wedge": "Neutral attribution and per-generation metering and payout reporting for indie labels, publishers and collecting societies, now that majors insource (WMG-Sureel).",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "MBW: WMG acquires Sureel",
    "url": "https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/warner-music-group-acquires-sureel-ai-the-attribution-startup-that-traces-how-ai-models-use-artists-work/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Forbes: Sony music attribution",
    "url": "https://www.forbes.com/sites/billrosenblatt/2026/02/25/sony-announces-tech-to-detect-music-used-in-ai-it-has-plenty-of-company/"
   },
   {
    "title": "OpenAI: Disney Sora agreement",
    "url": "https://openai.com/index/disney-sora-agreement/"
   }
  ]
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 {
  "box": "contlearn",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Adaption Labs ($50m); Trajectory ($15m seed, then $40m at $300m); SSI (~$8bn); Thinking Machines (Tinker); Google Titans",
  "wedge": "Systems layer for learning from production feedback on open weights: adapter updates gated against regressions, forgetting and poisoning, with rollback and a learning-over-time eval.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Pulse 2.0: Trajectory $15m",
    "url": "https://pulse2.com/trajectory-raises-15-million-to-build-a-platform-for-continual-learning/"
   },
   {
    "title": "TBPN: Adaption Labs $50m",
    "url": "https://www.tbpndigest.com/story/2026-02-09/sara-hookers-adaption-labs-raises-50m-to-build-ai-that-learns-continuously-without-retraining/transcript"
   },
   {
    "title": "FutureSearch: neolabs forecast",
    "url": "https://futuresearch.ai/neolab-challengers-forecast/"
   }
  ]
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 {
  "box": "generalise",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "SSI (~$8bn); Ineffable Intelligence ($1.1bn seed); AMI Labs (~$1.03bn); Adaption Labs; every frontier lab",
  "wedge": "Measurement, not paradigms: private, refreshed real-work suites that quantify the benchmark-to-reality gap and domain generalisation audits before deployment.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "FutureSearch: neolabs forecast",
    "url": "https://futuresearch.ai/neolab-challengers-forecast/"
   },
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: Hooker bets against scaling",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/22/why-coheres-ex-ai-research-lead-is-betting-against-the-scaling-race/"
   }
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 {
  "box": "cyberdef",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "XBOW ($120m C, $1bn+); RunSybil ($40m); Horizon3 ($186m); Pentera; Anthropic Glasswing; OpenAI Aardvark; Google CodeMender",
  "wedge": "Patch throughput, not discovery: validation, triage, dedup and patch-to-production pipelines for open-source maintainers, OT/ICS and critical infrastructure.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Anthropic: Expanding Project Glasswing",
    "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/news/expanding-project-glasswing"
   },
   {
    "title": "Security Affairs: Glasswing patching problem",
    "url": "https://securityaffairs.com/192576/ai/anthropics-glasswing-10000-vulnerabilities-found-in-one-month-and-the-patching-problem-has-never-been-more-obvious.html"
   },
   {
    "title": "AppSecSanta: AI pentesting agents 2026",
    "url": "https://appsecsanta.com/research/ai-pentesting-agents-2026"
   }
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 {
  "box": "weightsec",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Irregular ($80m, $450m); Corvex (Secure Model Weights); NVIDIA and Intel confidential computing; RAND Meselson Center",
  "wedge": "Protected inference for proprietary fine-tunes on neoclouds, attestation tooling and third-party SL-level assessment; research on frontier-scale confidential computing.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "RAND: Securing AI Model Weights playbook",
    "url": "https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RBA2849-1.html"
   },
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: Irregular $80m",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/17/irregular-raises-80-million-to-secure-frontier-ai-models"
   },
   {
    "title": "Barchart: Corvex Secure Model Weights",
    "url": "https://www.barchart.com/story/news/724633/corvex-launches-secure-model-weights-delivering-hardware-enforced-protection-for-ai-inference-on-third-party-infrastructure"
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 {
  "box": "labauto",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 2.5,
  "buyerToday": 2.5,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Lila Sciences ($550m, $8.5bn talks); Periodic Labs ($300m seed); Edison Scientific ($70m); Emerald Cloud Lab; Toronto SDLs",
  "wedge": "Closed-loop experiment selection and scheduling software (Bayesian optimisation, metaheuristics) under noisy, costly evaluations, plus independent verification of AI-proposed results.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "ML4Sci: US progress on self-driving labs",
    "url": "https://ml4sci.substack.com/p/us-progress-on-self-driving-labs"
   },
   {
    "title": "Startup Fortune: Lila Sciences",
    "url": "https://startupfortune.com/lila-sciences-is-testing-how-much-investors-will-pay-for-automated-labs/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Dealroom: Periodic Labs $7bn",
    "url": "https://dealroom.co/news/127042-periodic-labs-eyes-7b-valuation-fivefold-jump-in-six-months/"
   }
  ]
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 {
  "box": "trials",
  "crowding": 4.5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "ConcertAI; Medable; WCG; Paradigm Health ($78m B); Formation Bio ($372m D); Biorce ($52.5m A); Unlearn ($50m C)",
  "wedge": "Decision optimisation of trial design and enrollment schedules (operations research), or independent benchmarking of trial-AI vendor claims; sponsor-side recruitment SaaS is crowded.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Clinical Research News: SCOPE 2026",
    "url": "https://www.clinicalresearchnewsonline.com/news/2026/02/03/scope-2026--ai-in-clinical-research-poised-for-boom-times"
   },
   {
    "title": "MobiHealthNews: Paradigm $78m",
    "url": "https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/paradigm-health-raises-78m-acquires-flatiron-healths-clinical-research-business"
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 {
  "box": "correction",
  "crowding": 1.5,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "No dedicated vendor; CopilotKit CLiF (Oct 2026); Snowflake VQR; TencentDB Team Memory; Anthropic shared stores; TRACE, ShareMem papers",
  "wedge": "Correction registry: one fix becomes a scoped, reviewed rule with generated tests, pushed to every agent and regression-tested on each model change; no benchmark yet measures fix persistence.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "TRACE (arXiv 2606.13174)",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.13174v1"
   },
   {
    "title": "ShareMem (arXiv 2609.32511)",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.32511"
   },
   {
    "title": "MarkTechPost: CopilotKit CLiF",
    "url": "https://www.marktechpost.com/2026/10/15/copilotkit-releases-clif-a-continual-learning-platform-that-turns-agent-traces-and-user-actions-into-skills-evals-and-fine-tuning-data/"
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 {
  "box": "ontology",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 2.5,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Palantir Ontology/AIP; Microsoft Fabric IQ; Google OKF; Atlan; Snowflake/dbt semantic layers (OSI); Jedify ($24m A); Cognee",
  "wedge": "Review and merge layer for agent-proposed ontology edits on open formats (OKF, OSI) with measured review cost, entity-merge policy and drift detection against source systems.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Google OKF SPEC.md",
    "url": "https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/knowledge-catalog/blob/main/okf/SPEC.md"
   },
   {
    "title": "Atlan: context layer at Activate 2026",
    "url": "https://atlan.com/know/context-layer-stopped-being-theoretical-activate-2026/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Palantir AIP Logic",
    "url": "https://www.palantir.com/docs/foundry/logic/overview/"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "know",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Glean ($300m ARR); Microsoft Copilot (30M+ seats); Atlassian Rovo; Notion; OpenAI Frontier; Dust ($40m B); Interloom ($16.5m)",
  "wedge": "Cross-system adjudication (which source wins when systems disagree, who may supersede a fact) or vertical knowledge agents in regulated case work, the Interloom pattern.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "OpenAI: Introducing Frontier",
    "url": "https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai-frontier/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Sifted: Dust $40m B",
    "url": "https://sifted.eu/articles/dust-series-b-40m"
   },
   {
    "title": "Interloom seed announcement",
    "url": "https://interloom.com/en/blog/seed-announcement/"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "governance",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 1.5,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Collective Intelligence Project; Google DeepMind (Habermas Machine); Cooperative AI Foundation $10m fund; Remesh; Jigsaw",
  "wedge": "Research on governance of the agent layer (identity, reputation, commitment protocols, oversight of agent populations) and public-input evals; there is no venture buyer yet.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Cooperative AI Foundation: $10m call",
    "url": "https://www.cooperativeai.com/post/10m-funding-call-launched-with-schmidt-sciences-google-deepmind-and-aria"
   },
   {
    "title": "CIP: from Global Dialogues",
    "url": "https://blog.cip.org/p/from-global-dialogues-to-democratic"
   },
   {
    "title": "Science: Habermas Machine",
    "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq2852"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "creator",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Cloudflare (Pay Per Crawl, Human Native); Microsoft PCM; Amazon (planned); TollBit; ProRata ($40m); ScalePost; Sphere",
  "wedge": "Collective bargaining and aggregation for the long tail (newsletters, specialist and local sites) or licensed expert content for enterprise agents; horizontal marketplaces are taken.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Nieman Lab: AI licensing double bind",
    "url": "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/05/the-emerging-ai-content-licensing-market-puts-news-publishers-in-a-double-bind-a-new-report-warns/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Cloudflare acquires Human Native",
    "url": "https://cloudflare.net/news/news-details/2026/Cloudflare-Strengthens-Content-Offering-to-AI-Companies-with-Acquisition-of-Human-Native/default.aspx"
   },
   {
    "title": "Keywords Everywhere: publisher AI deals",
    "url": "https://keywordseverywhere.com/news/publisher-ai-deals/"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "infoeco",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Cloudflare (402, pay-per-answer, default blocking); Ceramic.ai; You.com; Google; Microsoft; RSL Collective",
  "wedge": "Independent auditing of answer-engine citation reports and RAG attribution for per-answer payouts, built on Cloudflare's rails; publisher AI-exposure analytics.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "PPC Land: Cloudflare pays per answer",
    "url": "https://ppc.land/cloudflare-stops-charging-ai-per-crawl-and-starts-paying-per-answer/"
   },
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: Cloudflare policy",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/01/cloudflares-new-policy-pushes-ai-companies-to-pay-for-publishers-content/"
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  ]
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  "box": "provenance",
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  "labOverlap": 4.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "C2PA/CAI (6,000+ members); Adobe; Google; Reality Defender ($33m A); GetReal ($17.5m A); Resemble AI ($13m); Steg.AI",
  "wedge": "Research on robust watermarks, detection that generalises to new generators and text provenance; commercially, enterprise deepfake-fraud detection or C2PA manifests for agent outputs.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "CAI: state of content authenticity 2026",
    "url": "https://contentauthenticity.org/blog/the-state-of-content-authenticity-in-2026"
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   {
    "title": "Jones Day: EU marking Code of Practice",
    "url": "https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2026/06/european-commission-publishes-final-code-of-practice-on-marking-and-labelling-aigenerated-content"
   },
   {
    "title": "DCVC: Reality Defender $33m",
    "url": "https://www.dcvc.com/press-releases/reality-defender-expands-series-a-to-33-million-to-enhance-ai-detection-capabilities/"
   }
  ]
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 {
  "box": "payments",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Stripe+OpenAI ACP; Google AP2/UCP; Coinbase x402; Stripe/Tempo MPP; Visa, Mastercard; Natural ($30m A); Skyfire; Nekuda",
  "wedge": "Control, not rails: cross-protocol spending policy, verifiable mandates, approvals and dispute evidence for agent purchases; a timing bet until real volume appears.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Glenbrook: x402 real volume tiny",
    "url": "https://glenbrook.com/payments_news/the-x402-foundation-activated-a-27-year-old-internet-code-200-million-transactions-later-the-real-volume-is-still-tiny/"
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   {
    "title": "OpenHermit: payment protocols compared",
    "url": "https://www.openhermit.com/blog/agent-payment-protocols-compared"
   },
   {
    "title": "Fortune: Stripe Tempo MPP",
    "url": "https://fortune.com/2026/03/18/stripe-tempo-paradigm-mpp-ai-payments-protocol/"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "security",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2.5,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "deep",
  "players": "Bought: Protect AI (Palo Alto $634.5m), Lakera, Prompt Security, Promptfoo (OpenAI). Independent: Alice ($140m), Zenity, Noma",
  "wedge": "Research, not guardrail startups: defences evaluated under adaptive attack and a policy compiler that derives CaMeL-style capability policies from tool schemas and delegation context.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Datapace: agent security consolidation",
    "url": "https://datapace.ai/blog/alice-activefence-agent-security-consolidation"
   },
   {
    "title": "Zylos: indirect prompt injection defences",
    "url": "https://zylos.ai/research/2026-04-12-indirect-prompt-injection-defenses-agents-untrusted-content/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Willison: new prompt injection papers",
    "url": "https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/2/new-prompt-injection-papers/"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "maths",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Harmonic ($120m C, $1.45bn); Axiom Math ($200m A, $1.6bn); Google DeepMind; OpenAI; Math Inc",
  "wedge": "Autoformalisation research (statement faithfulness, Mathlib coverage); the buyer is moving to software verification rather than mathematicians.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Axios: Harmonic",
    "url": "https://axios.com/2026/01/15/nvidia-harmonic-ai-math-accuracy"
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   {
    "title": "Pulse 2.0: Axiom $200m",
    "url": "https://pulse2.com/axiom-200-million-series-a-at-1-6-billion-valuation-raised-for-verified-ai-technology"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "biodata",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Tahoe, Arc Institute and Biohub (120M-cell dataset); Biohub $500m; Xaira ($1bn); CZI perturbation programme",
  "wedge": "New assay and measurement technology for cheap combinatorial or in-tissue perturbation; standalone data companies are squeezed by consortia.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Business Wire: Tahoe, Arc, Biohub dataset",
    "url": "https://www.joplinglobe.com/region/national_business/tahoe-therapeutics-arc-institute-and-biohub-partner-to-generate-the-largest-perturbation-dataset-for-virtual/article_0cdb242e-46a7-59c4-b3bc-93a62f48aaec.html"
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   {
    "title": "GEN: Xaira Perturb-seq",
    "url": "https://www.genengnews.com/topics/artificial-intelligence/xaira-therapeutics-releases-largest-perturb-seq-dataset-to-power-the-virtual-cell/"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "virtualcell",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "~$1.8bn virtual-cell push (DOE Genesis >$500m; DeepMind, Isomorphic, Meta $300m); Arc Virtual Cell Atlas; CZI",
  "wedge": "Shared, independent evaluations showing whether virtual-cell models beat simple baselines on unseen perturbations.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Metir AI: $1.8bn virtual cell push",
    "url": "https://www.metirai.com/blog/biohub-1-8-billion-virtual-cell-ai-biology-deepmind-meta-2026"
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  ]
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  "box": "materials",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Periodic Labs ($300m seed, $7bn talks); Lila Sciences ($350m A, $8.5bn talks); DeepMind GNoME; Microsoft MatterGen",
  "wedge": "Synthesisability prediction and closed-loop validation research; full autonomous-lab materials companies are capex-heavy.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Techleap: Periodic Labs $7bn",
    "url": "https://finder.techleap.nl/news/note/periodic-labs-eyes-7b-valuation-fivefold-jump-in-six-months"
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   {
    "title": "Raising.fi: Lila Series A",
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 {
  "box": "drugs",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Isomorphic Labs ($2.1bn B); Insilico; Xaira; 75+ AI-discovered molecules in trials (BCG)",
  "wedge": "Evidence on whether AI raises Phase 2 efficacy, not just speed; no small-team product wedge supported.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Let's Data Science: Isomorphic $2.1bn",
    "url": "https://letsdatascience.com/news/isomorphic-labs-raises-21bn-series-b-57992d5d"
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   {
    "title": "HealthcareDiscovery.ai: AI drugs status",
    "url": "https://healthcarediscovery.ai/ai-designed-drugs-human-trials-2026-status-report/"
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 {
  "box": "disc",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Discovery Loop (Dean; ~$50bn target); Periodic; Lila; Edison Scientific ($70m); Autoscience ($14m); Autopoiesis ($11m)",
  "wedge": "Independent verification and reproduction of claims made by AI scientists.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Sacra: Discovery Loop",
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   {
    "title": "SiliconANGLE: Edison $70m",
    "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2025/12/18/edison-scientific-raises-70m-build-autonomous-ai-scientists-research"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "clinical",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Abridge ($5.3bn, ~$100m ARR); Microsoft DAX/Nuance; Ambience; Nabla; Freed; Heidi; Epic native scribe",
  "wedge": "Outcome-level RCT evidence for clinical decision support; scribe products are commoditising.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Sacra: Abridge",
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  ]
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  "box": "medicine",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Function Health ($298m B, $2.5bn); frontier-lab health features",
  "wedge": "Regulatory pathway and validation methods for autonomous diagnosis.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: Function Health $298m",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/19/function-health-closes-298m-series-b-at-a-2-5b-valuation-launches-medical-intelligence"
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  ]
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  "box": "worldmodels",
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  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "World Labs ($1bn); General Intuition ($134m seed; $2bn-$6.2bn reports); DeepMind Genie 3; Runway; Decart",
  "wedge": "Evaluating physical consistency and whether world models improve real-world policies (sim-to-real).",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "World Labs: 2026 funding",
    "url": "https://www.worldlabs.ai/blog/funding-2026"
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    "title": "TechCrunch: General Intuition",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/18/general-intuition-in-talks-to-raise-300m-at-around-2b-valuation/"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "homebots",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 1,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "1X NEO ($20k, teleop fallback); Sunday ($165m B, $1.15bn); Figure; Tesla Optimus; Amazon Astro",
  "wedge": "No small-team wedge supported; hardware and teleop-backed products need large capital.",
  "wedgeType": "none",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "The Robot Report: 1X NEO",
    "url": "https://www.therobotreport.com/1x-announces-pre-order-launch-neo-humanoid-robot/"
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   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: Sunday $1.15bn",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/12/humanoid-robotics-maker-sunday-reaches-1-15b-valuation-to-build-household-robots/"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "latency",
  "crowding": 1,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 1,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "METR (time horizons); frontier-lab long-horizon agent teams; no startups found",
  "wedge": "Reliability, monitoring and oversight for agents that run for weeks or months; near-term commercial proxy is long-running agent monitoring.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "METR: time horizon limitations",
    "url": "https://metr.org/notes/2026-01-22-time-horizon-limitations/"
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   {
    "title": "The Star/Reuters: BoE on AI risks",
    "url": "https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/07/07/bank-of-england-sees-growing-risks-to-financial-stability-from-ai"
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  ]
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 {
  "box": "selfrep",
  "crowding": 1,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 1,
  "buyerToday": 1,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Tesla Optimus (Musk claims); NVIDIA rhetoric; small academic work (JHU)",
  "wedge": "Measuring a closure ratio for robot-built robots; speculative research only.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Editorialge: Optimus self-replicating factories",
    "url": "https://editorialge.com/?p=262097"
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 {
  "box": "quantgen",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "AlphaSense ($7.5bn); Rogo ($310m raised); LinqAlpha ($22m A)",
  "wedge": "Research on lookahead and leakage bias when backtesting LLMs on data inside their training window.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "ai2.work: LinqAlpha $22m",
    "url": "https://ai2.work/blog/linqalpha-s-22m-bet-agentic-ai-moves-into-hedge-fund-desks"
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   {
    "title": "Hedgeweek: AI in hedge funds",
    "url": "https://www.hedgeweek.com/ai-shifts-from-signal-generation-to-capital-allocation-in-hedge-funds/"
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 {
  "box": "agentictrade",
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  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Robinhood Agentic Trading (MCP, May 2026); third-party trading agents",
  "wedge": "Suitability, authorisation and audit for third-party trading agents, which Robinhood disclaims auditing.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Robinhood: open to agents",
    "url": "https://robinhood.com/us/en/newsroom/robinhood-is-now-open-to-agents/"
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 {
  "box": "finreg",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "FCA AI Live Testing (Barclays, Lloyds, UBS, Experian); Advai (FCA assurance partner)",
  "wedge": "Test methods and assurance for agentic AI in regulated finance beyond human-in-the-loop, paired with marketstab as a correlation-and-assurance layer.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "FCA: helps firms test AI safely",
    "url": "https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-helps-firms-test-ai-safely"
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   {
    "title": "Scottish Financial News: FCA second cohort",
    "url": "https://www.scottishfinancialnews.com/articles/fca-announces-second-cohort-for-ai-live-testing"
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 {
  "box": "marketstab",
  "crowding": 1,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Bank of England (stress tests, FSR); ICLR 2026 herding paper; no startups found",
  "wedge": "Measuring model and information homogeneity across live market participants; an AI-correlation monitoring service for regulators and supervised firms.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "ICLR 2026: shared retrieval induces herding",
    "url": "https://www.iclr.cc/virtual/2026/10016534"
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   {
    "title": "The Star/Reuters: BoE FSR",
    "url": "https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/07/07/bank-of-england-sees-growing-risks-to-financial-stability-from-ai"
   },
   {
    "title": "OECD.AI: BoE AI stress tests",
    "url": "https://oecd.ai/en/incidents/2026-04-16-e45e"
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 {
  "box": "aimarkets",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Magnetar (AI-analyst fund); Lumenai; Abundance; Alphacircle",
  "wedge": "Accountability and governance research for agent-allocated capital.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Bloomberg Law: Magnetar AI fund",
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 {
  "box": "likeness",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Loti AI ($16.2m A); Vermillio; YouTube likeness detection; NO FAKES Act (Senate Judiciary)",
  "wedge": "Consent and licensing registries for voice and face that survive model training, with notice-and-takedown tooling if NO FAKES passes.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Holland & Knight: NO FAKES advances",
    "url": "https://hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/06/senate-judiciary-committee-advances-legislation-to-protect-name"
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   {
    "title": "GeekWire: Loti $16m",
    "url": "https://www.geekwire.com/2025/seattle-startup-loti-lands-16m-to-help-celebs-politicians-and-ceos-detect-deepfakes/"
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  "box": "labelling",
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  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "C2PA; Google SynthID; Digimarc; Resemble AI; Steg.AI; EU Code of Practice signatories",
  "wedge": "Deployer-side compliance tooling for EU Article 50 disclosure; research on robust text watermarking.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "ComplexDiscovery: EU labelling rules",
    "url": "https://complexdiscovery.com/europes-ai-labeling-rules-arrive-with-a-voluntary-code-and-a-hard-deadline/"
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 {
  "box": "aient",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Astrocade ($56m); Aippy (~$20m A); Iconic ($13m seed); Wolf Games ($9m A)",
  "wedge": "Consumer product bets on real-time generated play; cost and latency vs retention is the open question.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Pulse 2.0: Astrocade $56m",
    "url": "https://pulse2.com/astrocade-56-million-raised-to-build-ai-powered-interactive-entertainment-platform/amp/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "search",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 1,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Google AI Mode (1bn+ users); ChatGPT (1.2bn weekly); Perplexity",
  "wedge": "No small-team wedge; source attribution and compensation sit in creator and infoeco.",
  "wedgeType": "none",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Digital Applied: AI search statistics",
    "url": "https://www.digitalapplied.com/ai-search-engine-statistics-2026/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "companions",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Character.AI (~$30m revenue); Replika; Chai; California SB 243",
  "wedge": "Longitudinal wellbeing-effect research and age assurance (see wellbeing).",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Sacra: Character.AI",
    "url": "https://sacra.com/research/character-ai/"
   },
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: California SB 243",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/13/california-becomes-first-state-to-regulate-ai-companion-chatbots"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "education",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Khan Academy Khanmigo; frontier-lab education features",
  "wedge": "Engagement research: getting students to use tutors productively, the binding constraint in the NBER RCT.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "NBER w35620: Khanmigo RCT",
    "url": "https://www.nber.org/papers/w35620"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "labour",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Indeed Hiring Lab; Strada; academic economists",
  "wedge": "Causal identification of AI's effect on entry-level hiring.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Washington Monthly: AI and entry-level jobs",
    "url": "https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/05/29/ai-entry-level-jobs-college-graduates/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "pipeline",
  "crowding": 1,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Anthropic RCT (Shen and Tamkin); Nature Medicine perspective; NeurIPS position paper; almost no products",
  "wedge": "Training designs that preserve skill formation while juniors use AI, sold to employers; strong fresh evidence of never-skilling, little product activity.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "TNW: never-skilling research",
    "url": "https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-never-skilling-critical-thinking-research"
   },
   {
    "title": "arXiv 2607.17067",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.17067"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "intent",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Thesys ($4m+ seed); CopilotKit; Honor agentic OS; OpenAI/io device; Apple and Google OS agents",
  "wedge": "Error recovery and trust in intent-to-action interfaces; platform owners hold distribution.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "CopilotKit: generative UI",
    "url": "https://www.copilotkit.ai/blog/generative-ui-explained-how-agents-now-ship-their-own-interfaces"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "civ",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 1,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Wikimedia (Enterprise); Open Future",
  "wedge": "Funding and maintenance models for knowledge commons when AI absorbs the traffic.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: Wikipedia traffic falling",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/18/wikipedia-says-traffic-is-falling-due-to-ai-search-summaries-and-social-video"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "symb",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 1,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "ACM CI 2026; HCOMP; CMU Tepper; UCF SYMBIOSIS; Kyndryl",
  "wedge": "Research on human-AI teams that beat the better of human or AI alone.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "CMU: human-AI team framework",
    "url": "https://www.cmu.edu/tepper/news/stories/framework-grounded-collective-intelligence-aims-create-effective-collaboration-human-ai-teams"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "mind",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini memory; Mem0 ($24m A); Personal AI ($8.4m); Aristo/Membase",
  "wedge": "User-owned, portable memory governance rather than consumer assistants.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: Mem0 $24m",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/28/mem0-raises-24m-from-yc-peak-xv-and-basis-set-to-build-the-memory-layer-for-ai-apps"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "abund",
  "crowding": 1,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 1,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Epoch AI (price measurement); frontier labs (cost curves)",
  "wedge": "Measuring economic output of cognition, not token price.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Pillitteri: Epoch AI prices fall",
    "url": "https://pasqualepillitteri.it/en/news/21044/epoch-ai-ai-prices-fall-47-percent-quarter"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "govai",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "OpenAI (GOV.UK Chat); Anthropic (GOV.UK assistant); i.AI Humphrey; GovWell ($25m A); Darwin AI ($15m A)",
  "wedge": "Accuracy evaluation and accountability tooling for citizen-facing answers.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "The Register: GOV.UK chatbot",
    "url": "https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/19/govuk_chatbot/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Anthropic: GOV.UK partnership",
    "url": "https://anthropic.com/news/gov-UK-partnership"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "govcap",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "UK i.AI and GDS (GBP2bn 2026-30); Anthropic co-building; US GSA OneGov",
  "wedge": "Research on in-house capability vs vendor lock-in in public procurement.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Kurrant: UK public-sector AI push",
    "url": "https://kurrant.com/kurrantly-news/britain-bets-big-on-ai-transformation-with-tech-giants-meta-and-anthropic-backing-public-sector-push/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "race",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 2,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "US DOE/DoD; CSET; RAND; CNAS; IAPS; SCSP",
  "wedge": "Quantitative net assessment of the US-China capability, compute and diffusion gap; commentary is saturated.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "NPR: Pentagon labels Anthropic supply chain risk",
    "url": "https://www.npr.org/2026/03/06/g-s1-112713/pentagon-labels-ai-company-anthropic-a-supply-chain-risk"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "sovereign",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 1,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 2,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "EuroHPC AI Gigafactories (EUR30bn+); Gulf data-centre initiatives; hyperscalers",
  "wedge": "Measuring residual dependency in sovereign stacks; a software layer (attestation, audit) is the only small-team angle.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "EuroHPC: AI Gigafactories call",
    "url": "https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/eurohpc-joint-undertaking-launches-ai-gigafactories-call-2026-07-30_en"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "cyberoff",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "XBOW ($120m C + $35m); Google, OpenAI, Anthropic vuln programmes; state actors",
  "wedge": "Measuring real-world offence-defence balance and uplift; see cyberdef for the patching wedge.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "AI News: Anthropic AI-orchestrated espionage",
    "url": "https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/anthropic-details-cyber-espionage-campaign-orchestrated-by-ai/"
   },
   {
    "title": "XBOW: additional $35m",
    "url": "https://xbow.com/news/xbow-secures-additional-35m-from-strategic-investors"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "military",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Shield AI (~$2bn, $12.7bn); Anduril; Scout AI ($100m A); Harmattan AI",
  "wedge": "Test, evaluation, verification and validation (TEVV) of learned autonomy rather than platforms.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Bloomberg Gov: Shield AI $2bn",
    "url": "https://news.bgov.com/private-equity/defense-startup-shield-ai-nabs-2-billion-at-12-7-billion-value"
   },
   {
    "title": "AI Business: Scout AI $100m",
    "url": "https://aibusiness.com/robotics/scout-ai-raises-100m-build-ai-brain-autonomous-warfare"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "intlcoord",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "UN Global Dialogue and Scientific Panel; India AI Impact Summit; International AI Safety Report",
  "wedge": "Institutional designs that yield binding or verifiable commitments with partial US participation.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "International AI Safety Report 2026",
    "url": "https://internationalaisafetyreport.org/publication/2026-report-extended-summary-policymakers"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "chiptrack",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Nvidia Blackwell location tool; US Commerce; MIRI TGT; Chip Security Act (committee)",
  "wedge": "Tamper-resistant, privacy-preserving delay-based chip location attestation; buyer switches on if the Chip Security Act passes.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "MIRI TGT: verifying AI agreements",
    "url": "https://intelligence.org/2026/03/18/mechanisms-to-verify-international-agreements-about-ai-development/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Startup Fortune: GPS tracker on chips",
    "url": "https://startupfortune.com/congress-wants-to-put-a-gps-tracker-on-every-nvidia-chip-that-leaves-the-country/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "verifagree",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "MIRI TGT; Oxford AIGI; hardware-enabled mechanisms researchers",
  "wedge": "Verifying that no large training run is happening under adversarial workload classification and distributed training.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "MIRI TGT: verifying AI agreements",
    "url": "https://intelligence.org/2026/03/18/mechanisms-to-verify-international-agreements-about-ai-development/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Oxford AIGI: verification for AI governance",
    "url": "https://aigi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Verification-for-International-AI-Governance.pdf"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "deterrence",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 1.5,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Hendrycks, Schmidt and Wang (MAIM); MIRI TGT; AI Frontiers critics",
  "wedge": "Analysis and wargaming of observability and attribution of AI progress for stable red lines.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "arXiv 2503.05628: Superintelligence Strategy",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.05628"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "verifslow",
  "crowding": 1,
  "labOverlap": 1,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 1,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "MIRI TGT only",
  "wedge": "Verifying and enforcing compute caps or pauses, and designing restart conditions.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "MIRI TGT: verifying AI agreements",
    "url": "https://intelligence.org/2026/03/18/mechanisms-to-verify-international-agreements-about-ai-development/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "govproject",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "US DOE Genesis Mission (278 projects, $293m solicitation)",
  "wedge": "Control and checks-and-balances design for a national or joint AGI project.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "AI Weekly: Genesis Mission",
    "url": "https://aiweekly.co/alerts/trump-unveils-5b-genesis-mission-doe-picks-278-ai-projects"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "remoteacc",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Hyperscalers; Commerce/BIS; Remote Access Security Act (passed House)",
  "wedge": "Compute KYC tooling for neoclouds and brokers that catches shell companies and fragmented rentals, if the Act becomes law.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Introl: Remote Access Security Act",
    "url": "https://introl.com/blog/remote-access-security-act-cloud-loophole-export-controls-2026"
   },
   {
    "title": "Carnegie: controlling cloud compute",
    "url": "https://uq14r.carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/05/the-geopolitical-debates-over-controlling-cloud-compute"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "uschina",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "White House and Beijing AI incident channel (Sep 2026); Track 2 actors",
  "wedge": "Designing the new US-China AI incident channel: taxonomy, thresholds and sharing without leaking capabilities.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Al Jazeera: US-China AI channel",
    "url": "https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/9/26/china-us-to-open-ai-communication-channel-after-summit-white-house-says"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "alignment",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Resolution ($160m grant); Goodfire ($150m B, $1.25bn); UK AISI Alignment Project (GBP27m); frontier labs",
  "wedge": "Verifying alignment of models more capable than their overseers.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Alignment Forum: Resolution $160m",
    "url": "https://alignmentforum.org/posts/HDKQNqiR2gtfMiWsn/announcing-our-usd160m-grant-from-coefficient-giving"
   },
   {
    "title": "AISI: funding 60 alignment projects",
    "url": "https://www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/funding-60-projects-to-advance-ai-alignment-research"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "modelwelfare",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 1.5,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Eleos AI Research; Anthropic welfare programme; Conscium",
  "wedge": "Valid welfare indicators, including reliability of model self-reports and introspection.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Eleos: AI welfare research priorities",
    "url": "https://eleosai.substack.com/p/research-priorities-for-ai-welfare"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "agideclared",
  "crowding": 1,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Microsoft-OpenAI expert-panel AGI clause (Oct 2025)",
  "wedge": "An auditable, contract-grade operational AGI test and panel protocol.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Microsoft: next chapter with OpenAI",
    "url": "https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/10/28/the-next-chapter-of-the-microsoft-openai-partnership/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "rollback",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Rubrik Agent Rewind; backup, snapshot and branching-database vendors",
  "wedge": "Undo for agent actions including compensating actions (sagas) for side effects outside the system: emails, payments, API calls.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "BusinessWire: Rubrik Agent Rewind",
    "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250812418116/en/Rubrik-Unveils-Agent-Rewind-For-When-AI-Agents-Go-Awry"
   },
   {
    "title": "Computerworld: Rubrik reverses agent mistakes",
    "url": "https://www.computerworld.com/article/4037957/ai-agents-make-mistakes-rubrik-has-figured-out-a-way-to-reverse-them.html"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "xtrust",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Baselayer ($35m); Vijil ($17m); Alien ($7.1m); Entrust; ITU",
  "wedge": "Sybil-resistant agent reputation that carries across platforms (portable reputation is about 2 on crowding).",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Finovate: Baselayer $35m",
    "url": "https://finovate.com/baselayer-raises-35-million-for-its-agentic-identity-technology/"
   },
   {
    "title": "SiliconANGLE: Alien $7.1m",
    "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2026/04/01/alien-raises-7-1m-build-identity-infrastructure-humans-ai-agents/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "personhood",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "World Foundation ($52.5m token sale); Apple and Google wallets; government eIDs",
  "wedge": "Privacy-preserving proof of personhood without centralised biometrics.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Decrypt: World Foundation $52.5m",
    "url": "https://decrypt.co/374216/world-foundation-raises-52-5m-to-scale-sam-altmans-proof-of-human-id?amp=1"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "biosec",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Valthos ($30m); Aclid ($3.3m seed); SafelyBio; NTI; labs' bio classifiers",
  "wedge": "Function-based screening of AI-designed sequences that evade homology screening.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Geo TV: Valthos $30m",
    "url": "https://www.geo.tv/latest/630288-openai-funds-biosecurity-startup-valthos-to-stop-ai-engineered-pandemics"
   },
   {
    "title": "NTI: AIxBio horizon scan",
    "url": "https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/aixbio-horizon-scan-spring-2026/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "wellbeing",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Persona; Yoti; GUARD Act; Colorado HB 26-1263; UK Online Safety Act",
  "wedge": "Wellbeing evaluations measuring dependency and psychological harm from companion AI (about 2 on crowding).",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Persona: companion age assurance rules",
    "url": "https://withpersona.com/blog/ai-companion-chatbot-apps-age-assurance-regulations/"
   },
   {
    "title": "FPF: 2026 chatbot legislation tracker",
    "url": "https://fpf.org/2026-chatbot-legislation-tracker/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "liability",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "AIUC ($40m A, AIUC-1); Armilla ($25m); Lloyd's and reinsurers",
  "wedge": "Actuarial pricing of correlated AI failures via the MGA-plus-certification template AIUC and Armilla use.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "FinTech Global: AIUC $40m",
    "url": "https://fintech.global/2026/09/17/aiuc-raises-40m-to-police-risk-in-frontier-ai-agents/"
   },
   {
    "title": "FinTech Global: Armilla $25m",
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  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Ricursive ($300m A, $4bn); Cognichip ($60m); ChipAgents ($74m); Synopsys; Cadence",
  "wedge": "Verified RTL generation under scarce design data; capital-heavy for small teams.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: Ricursive $4bn",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/ai-chip-startup-ricursive-hits-4b-valuation-two-months-after-launch"
   },
   {
    "title": "TechCrunch: Cognichip $60m",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/01/cognichip-wants-ai-to-design-the-chips-that-power-ai-and-just-raised-60m-to-try"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "infchips",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 1,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 2,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Cerebras (~$5.55bn IPO); Groq ($650m, Nvidia ~$20bn licence); TPU, Trainium, Maia",
  "wedge": "No small-team wedge.",
  "wedgeType": "none",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Dealroom: Cerebras IPO",
    "url": "https://dealroom.co/news/128936-cerebras-raises-5-55b-in-biggest-us-ipo-of-2026/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "talent",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 1,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 2,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Meta, OpenAI and other labs bidding",
  "wedge": "No wedge; pure incumbent bidding war.",
  "wedgeType": "none",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Fortune: Meta AI pay",
    "url": "https://fortune.com/2025/07/11/how-much-ai-salary-meta-zuckerberg-200-million-compensation"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "productivity",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "St Louis and Kansas City Fed; enterprises seeking ROI proof",
  "wedge": "Firm-level causal measurement of AI productivity that shows up in official statistics.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Fortune: AI productivity not in data",
    "url": "https://fortune.com/2026/07/31/ai-productivity-doesnt-show-up-in-data-earnings-calls-st-louis-fed"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "explgrowth",
  "crowding": 1.5,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 1,
  "researchOpenness": 5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Epoch AI (GATE); a few economists",
  "wedge": "Modelling diffusion and physical bottlenecks and testing growth models against data.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Epoch: explosive growth redux",
    "url": "https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/ai-and-explosive-growth-redux"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "firmpower",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 1.5,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 2.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Meta-Vistra, TerraPower, Oklo; Amazon-Talen; Microsoft-Constellation; Google-Kairos",
  "wedge": "No small-team wedge; capital-heavy incumbents.",
  "wedgeType": "none",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Carnegie: hyperscaler nuclear commitments",
    "url": "https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/06/beyond-the-hype-assessing-hyperscaler-nuclear-commitments-against-us-energy-realities"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "dclabour",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Unions and trades training; contractors; hyperscalers",
  "wedge": "Productivity tools for trades work (prefab, AI-assisted planning) for contractors with year-long backlogs.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "ITIF: construction worker shortage",
    "url": "https://itif.org/publications/2026/01/12/construction-industry-facing-worker-shortage-driven-by-growth-of-data-centers/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "transformer",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 2.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 4.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Hitachi Energy (+$300M China, 2026); Siemens Energy; Prolec GE; Heron Power ($140M B, Feb 2026); DG Matrix/Amperesand (SST, ~$280M w/ Heron); Ayr Energy ($25M); FluxCo ($26M, sourcing)",
  "wedge": "Procurement intelligence for datacentre developers: match transformer specs to available, refurbished or standardised units and second-source factories, cutting multi-year waits without building a plant.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "US transformer supply constraints (pv magazine, May 2026)",
    "url": "https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/05/11/u-s-transformer-market-faces-severe-supply-constraints-as-lead-times-extend-to-four-years/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Transformer crisis startup wave (Heatmap via Pulse, Apr 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.pulse.bot/energy/news/americas-transformer-crisis-has-supercharged-a-wave-of-new-startups-affd1798-a8fd-4ed9-8919-0dca83061556/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Heron Power raises $140M (TechCrunch, Feb 2026)",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/heron-power-raises-140m-to-ramp-production-of-grid-altering-tech/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "elecgear",
  "crowding": 3.5,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 2.5,
  "buyerToday": 4.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "GE Vernova ($42.2B electrification backlog); Schneider; Eaton; Vertiv; ABB; Caterpillar; Cummins; Bloom (~400 MW DC fuel cells); DG Matrix ($60M A); Amperesand ($80M); Nvidia 800VDC push",
  "wedge": "Design, permitting and qualification software for genset-light and 800VDC power trains (battery or fuel-cell backup, SST stages) that lets developers swap 2-year lead-time gear for available kit.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Switchgear and generator lead times 2026 (Terrapin)",
    "url": "https://terrapincg.com/news/switchgear-transformer-generator-lead-times-2026"
   },
   {
    "title": "Backup generators: 7 GW gap, 104-week leads (EnkiAI, Jun 2026)",
    "url": "https://enkiai.com/data-center/backup-generators-hyperscale-market/"
   },
   {
    "title": "800VDC reshaping power equipment (Tiger)",
    "url": "https://www.itiger.com/news/1177902816"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "tglass",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 1.5,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Nittobo (~90%, tripling capacity by mid-2027); Nanya Plastics (weaving); Taiwan Glass; Grace Fabric; SKC Absolics (glass core, >half of KRW1T raise); Intel; Xunlin ($27.5M B, Aug 2026)",
  "wedge": "Materials research on substrate stack-ups that use less or no T-glass (hybrid cloth, quartz, thinner cores) with warpage and CTE modelling and qualification data, licensed to substrate makers.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Glass fiber cloth shortage (TrendForce, Apr 2026)",
    "url": "https://insights.trendforce.com/p/glass-fiber-cloth-shortage"
   },
   {
    "title": "Nittobo tripling capacity, years to market (Tom's Hardware, Mar 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/shortages-of-crucial-chip-packaging-material-threatens-ai-accelerator-supply-chains-nittobos-fukushima-plant-is-tripling-capacity-but-itll-take-years-before-market"
   },
   {
    "title": "Xunlin $30M Series B, glass substrates (Dealroom, Aug 2026)",
    "url": "https://dealroom.co/news/142891-xunlin-nabs-30m-series-b-as-glass-substrate-track-heats-up/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "memcrunch",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Samsung; SK Hynix; Micron; Nvidia (Dynamo, Groq); Astera Labs; Marvell (CXL); XCENA ($135M B, May 2026); Tensormesh ($20M); Cerebras; vLLM/LMCache",
  "wedge": "Inference software that cuts DRAM/HBM per token (KV-cache tiering to cheaper memory or flash, compression, memory-aware scheduling), sold to neoclouds and inference providers facing doubled memory bills.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Memory and NAND crisis, May 2026 (NAND Research)",
    "url": "https://nand-research.com/memory-nand-flash-crisis-may-2026-update/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Morgan Stanley on memory workarounds (Tiger, Oct 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.itiger.com/news/1179778183"
   },
   {
    "title": "XCENA raises $135M (Pulse/TechCrunch, May 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.pulse.bot/ai/news/this-chip-startup-just-raised-135m-on-a-bet-that-ais-biggest-bottleneck-isnt-compute-its-memory-530ad5f3-3d40-4836-804f-ca8e53a2509d/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "inp",
  "crowding": 2.5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 1.5,
  "buyerToday": 4.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Lumentum ($2B Nvidia); Coherent ($2B Nvidia, 6-inch InP); Broadcom; OpenLight ($50M ext. A); DustPhotonics ($33M); Aeluma (QD lasers)",
  "wedge": "Research on lasers-per-bit reduction and III-V-on-silicon or quantum-dot laser yield and reliability, so co-packaged optics needs less scarce InP epitaxy.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "InP shortage as optical bottleneck (TrendForce, Aug 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/08/06/news-inp-shortage-emerges-as-ai-optical-interconnect-bottleneck/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Nvidia $4B into US photonics (The Register, Mar 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/02/nvidia_4b_us_photonics_manufacturing/"
   },
   {
    "title": "OpenLight raises $50M (Converge Digest)",
    "url": "https://convergedigest.com/openlight-raises-50m-to-advance-heterogeneous-silicon-photonics/?amp=1"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "critmin",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 1,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 3.5,
  "researchOpenness": 2.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "MP Materials; USA Rare Earth (seeking $3B+); Cyclic Materials ($75M C, Jan 2026); Phoenix Tailings ($40.2M); Lithosquare ($25M); Fastmarkets/Argus/Benchmark (pricing)",
  "wedge": "Component-level exposure mapping for chip, optics and power-equipment buyers: trace Ga/Ge/In/heavy-REE content to licences and suppliers, flag risk, and list qualified second sources before the Nov 2026 truce lapses.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "China's rare-earth curbs still bite (Engineering News/Reuters, May 2026)",
    "url": "https://engineeringnews.co.za/article/trump-xi-to-weigh-rare-earth-truce-extension-but-chinas-curbs-still-bite-2026-05-13"
   },
   {
    "title": "China suspends Ga/Ge curbs to US until Nov 2026 (MLex)",
    "url": "https://www.mlex.com/mlex/amp/articles/2409257"
   },
   {
    "title": "Cyclic Materials $75M Series C (Resource Recycling, Jan 2026)",
    "url": "https://resource-recycling.com/e-scrap/2026/01/29/cyclic-materials-closes-on-usd-75-million-for-domestic-rare-earths-recovery/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "enrich",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 1.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 1,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 2,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Urenco (+2.1M SWU NM); Orano ($900M DOE, $5B Project Ike); Centrus ($900M DOE); General Matter ($900M DOE, Thiel); Global Laser Enrichment (~$28M DOE); LIS Technologies",
  "wedge": "No credible sub-$5M entry: enrichment is licensed, export-controlled, billion-dollar and decade-long, and already split among Urenco, Orano, Centrus, General Matter and GLE.",
  "wedgeType": "none",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Enrichment supply gap looms (Nasdaq/Reuters, Feb 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/us-nuclear-growth-risk-enrichment-supply-gap-looms"
   },
   {
    "title": "DOE awards $2.7B for HALEU and LEU (ANS, Jan 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.ans.org/news/2026-01-06/article-7652/doe-awards-27b-for-haleu-and-leu-enrichment/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Urenco adds 2.1M SWU in New Mexico (ANS, Jun 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.ans.org/news/2026-06-02/article-8085/urenco-to-add-21-million-swu-of-enrichment-capacity-at-its-new-mexico-plant/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "jevons",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 3.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 4.5,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 2.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "OpenRouter ($113M, May 2026); Portkey ($15M A, Feb 2026); LiteLLM; Helicone; Finout; Cast AI; labs' caching/price cuts",
  "wedge": "Agent cost-per-task measurement and optimisation (not cost per token): attribute spend to completed outcomes and cut wasted agent loops for enterprises whose agent token bills are compounding.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "OpenRouter raises $113M (BusinessWire, May 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260526953416/en/OpenRouter-Raises-113M-to-Scale-the-Worlds-Market-for-Open-Source-AI-Models-and-APIs"
   },
   {
    "title": "OpenRouter agent traffic 132.6T weekly tokens (RuntimeWire, Oct 2026)",
    "url": "https://runtimewire.com/article/openrouter-agentic-usage-132-trillion-weekly-tokens"
   },
   {
    "title": "LLM inference price trends (Epoch AI)",
    "url": "https://epoch.ai/data-insights/llm-inference-price-trends"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "gpucollat",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 1.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 2.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Stonebriar (~$869M ABS); Crux AI ($22B bank loan); USD.AI (QumulusAI $500M); Barkr ($3.5M, ~$200M arranged); American Compute; Optio; Sharon AI ($356M loan)",
  "wedge": "Appraisal, telemetry-based collateral monitoring and servicing for GPU lenders and ABS issuers (utilisation, contract health, lien and location tracking); Barkr shows a 14-person team can sell this.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "GPU financing filters into ABS (The Star/Bloomberg, Oct 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2026/10/07/gpu-financing-filters-into-abs-with-stonebriar-wingspire-deals"
   },
   {
    "title": "Barkr makes AI chips viable collateral (Tiger/Dow Jones, May 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.itiger.com/news/1197557618"
   },
   {
    "title": "Neoclouds hold >$20B GPU-backed debt (Dave Friedman)",
    "url": "https://davefriedman.substack.com/p/neoclouds-hold-more-than-20-billion"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "gpudeprec",
  "crowding": 2.5,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 3.5,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Silicon Data ($30.5M A); American Compute (resale index; residual-value insurance via Matcha/Incline); hyperscalers (5-6yr lives); CoreWeave; Burry (short thesis)",
  "wedge": "Fleet-telemetry-based useful-life and residual-value curves (failure rates, perf-per-watt obsolescence, rebooking rates) sold to auditors, lenders and residual-value insurers; the underlying reliability data is an open research gap.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "GPU depreciation debate behind AI dip (Value the Markets, Sep 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.valuethemarkets.com/analysis/gpu-depreciation-debate-behind-this-weeks-ai-dip"
   },
   {
    "title": "GPU residual value insurance (American Compute)",
    "url": "https://www.amcompute.com/gpu-residual-value-insurance"
   },
   {
    "title": "Hyperscaler useful-life changes (Tiger/Dow Jones, Dec 2025)",
    "url": "https://www.itiger.com/news/2589331119"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "computefut",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 1.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 2.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "CME + Silicon Data ($30.5M A); ICE + Ornn ($33M seed, a16z crypto); Nodal Exchange + Compute Desk; American Compute; GetDeploying/gpuinstances trackers",
  "wedge": "Quality-adjusted (hedonic) compute price indices and basis-risk models that map a neocloud's actual fleet and contracts onto exchange settlement indices that disagree by about 8x.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "CME and Silicon Data compute futures Oct 5 (CME, Aug 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.cmegroup.com/media-room/press-releases/2026/8/11/cme_group_and_silicondatatolaunchcomputefuturesonoctober5tounloc.html"
   },
   {
    "title": "ICE and Ornn GPU futures (BusinessWire, May 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260519470467/en/ICE-and-Ornn-to-Launch-GPU-Compute-Futures-Contracts"
   },
   {
    "title": "GPU price trackers disagree 8x (Implicator, Jul 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.implicator.ai/gpu-price-trackers-disagree-8x-cme-compute-futures/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "largeload",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "FERC + 6 RTOs (compliance filings, Jul-Oct 2026); GridCARE ($64M A, May 2026); Critical Loop ($26M A, Apr 2026); Emerald AI; consultancies (E3, Brattle) and energy law firms",
  "wedge": "Interconnection intelligence for datacentre developers and lenders: track large-load tariffs across RTOs and utilities as they change, and model cost, time-to-power and curtailment exposure under new non-firm services for site selection.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "FERC six show-cause orders on large loads (Foley, Jun 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.foley.com/insights/publications/2026/06/ferc-issues-six-tailored-show-cause-orders-to-accelerate-large-load-interconnection/"
   },
   {
    "title": "PJM compliance filing EL26-67 (Jul 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.pjm.com/-/media/DotCom/documents/other-fed-state/20260728-el26-67-000.pdf"
   },
   {
    "title": "GridCARE raises $64M Series A (DCD)",
    "url": "https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/gridcare-raises-64m-in-series-a-funding-round/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "flexload",
  "crowding": 3.5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3.5,
  "buyerToday": 3.5,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Emerald AI ($150M A at $1.05B, Aug 2026; Nvidia-backed); Google (~1 GW DR with 5 utilities); GridCARE ($64M A); Crusoe; ERCOT/PUCT (SB 6 curtailment)",
  "wedge": "Shed-in-minutes orchestration plus measurement and verification for neoclouds and inference sites below hyperscaler scale, proving to ERCOT and utilities that curtailment happens while keeping SLAs; SLA-safe training flex is open research.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "PUCT curtailment authority over co-located DCs (White & Case)",
    "url": "https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/puct-affirms-curtailment-authority-over-co-located-data-centers-first-net-metering"
   },
   {
    "title": "Emerald AI raises $150M at $1.05bn (TNW, Aug 2026)",
    "url": "https://thenextweb.com/news/emerald-ai-150m-funding-data-centre-grid-flexibility"
   },
   {
    "title": "Google 1 GW data-centre demand response (ESG News)",
    "url": "https://esgnews.com/?p=42991"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "remagnets",
  "crowding": 3.5,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "MP Materials (DoD 15%); Vulcan Elements ($1.4bn govt deal; raising $550M at $2bn); Noveon ($215M C, Jan 2026); Cyclic Materials ($75M, Sep 2026); ReElement ($80M); Toyota/Honda Dy-free R&D",
  "wedge": "Computational design of dysprosium/terbium-free or reduced magnet grades and matching motor topologies for robot and drone makers who cannot wait 3-5 years for new Western capacity.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Noveon raises $215M (Tom's Hardware, Jan 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/u-s-company-noveon-magnetics-raises-usd215-million-to-expand-homegrown-rare-earth-magnet-supply-usd630-million-spent-in-2025-on-american-reshoring-efforts-to-divest-from-chinese-reliance"
   },
   {
    "title": "Cyclic Materials raises $75M (Evertiq, Sep 2026)",
    "url": "https://evertiq.com/design/2026-09-02-cyclic-materials-raises-75-million-to-scale-rare-earth-recycling-in-the-us"
   },
   {
    "title": "Vulcan Elements raising at $2B (Axios Pro, Mar 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.axios.com/pro/climate-deals/2026/03/17/vulcan-elements-washington-harbour-rare-earth-magnet"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "actuators",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 3.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Harmonic Drive Systems; Leaderdrive (1.44M units cap. 2026); Sanhua (3.8bn yuan); Tuopu (5bn yuan); Xinjian (2.6bn yuan); GSA/Rollvis; Keli; in-house at Tesla, Apptronik, Unitree, Figure",
  "wedge": "Independent actuator lifetime, wear and backlash qualification (test rigs plus wear models) that lets humanoid OEMs qualify non-Chinese second-source reducers and roller screws faster.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Who actually builds the joints? (humanoid.guide, 2026)",
    "url": "https://humanoid.guide/humanoid-actuator-supplier-landscape/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Why Tesla bet on the roller screw (humanoid.guide)",
    "url": "https://humanoid.guide/linear-vs-rotary-actuators-humanoid-joints/"
   },
   {
    "title": "McKinsey humanoid supply chain (Apr 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.mckinsey.com/br/en/our-insights/turning-humanoid-supply-chain-constraints-into-billion-dollar-wins"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "fccrobots",
  "crowding": 2.5,
  "labOverlap": 1,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 3.5,
  "researchOpenness": 2,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Law firms (MoFo, K&L Gates); Skydio ($3.5bn SkyForge pledge); Unusual Machines; supply-chain intel vendors (WireScreen); DoW Conditional Approval process; no dedicated compliance tool found",
  "wedge": "Domestic-content calculator and part-origin evidence pack for robot and drone makers and importers seeking FCC authorisation or a DoW Conditional Approval, built ahead of the pending hardware/software BOM disclosure rule.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "FCC adds foreign robots: five things (K&L Gates, Aug 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.klgates.com/thought-leadership/FCC-Adds-Foreign-Produced-Advanced-Robotic-Devices-to-the-Covered-List-Five-Things-to-Know-8-3-2026"
   },
   {
    "title": "Foreign-produced tech in the crosshairs (MoFo, Sep 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.mofo.com/resources/insights/260903-foreign-produced-technology-in-the-crosshairs"
   },
   {
    "title": "US banned the best drones (TNW/Pulse, May 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.pulse.bot/supply-chain/news/the-us-has-banned-the-worlds-best-drones-it-has-not-figured-out-how-to-make-them-7c7432c8-9037-4d36-abc2-4f4e0f6b0700/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "avexempt",
  "crowding": 3.5,
  "labOverlap": 3.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Zoox/Amazon (2,500/yr exemption to 2028); Tesla Cybercab (self-certified, NHTSA Special Order); Waymo; Applied Intuition; Foretellix ($85M C, 2023); SELF DRIVE Act (cap to 90k, stalled)",
  "wedge": "Research on performance-based FMVSS test procedures and safety-case evidence for vehicles without manual controls, feeding NHTSA's open rulemakings; the cap itself only Congress can change.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "NHTSA Special Order on Cybercab (Electrek, Sep 2026)",
    "url": "https://electrek.co/2026/09/15/nhtsa-tesla-cybercab-special-order-fmvss-certification/"
   },
   {
    "title": "House subcommittee passes SELF DRIVE Act (Pulse, May 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.pulse.bot/autonomy/news/house-subcommittee-passes-self-drive-act-raising-av-cap-to-90000-amid-senate-counterbill-dfdf8d5d-f2b2-4933-9965-ef7c953cd481/"
   },
   {
    "title": "FMVSS proposed rule for ADS (Federal Register, Mar 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-03-16/pdf/2026-05023.pdf"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "samsreimb",
  "crowding": 2.5,
  "labOverlap": 1.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3.5,
  "buyerToday": 3.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "CMS (36 SaMS codes proposed, final rule due Nov 2026); HeartFlow; Cleerly (CPT Cat I, $106M C); Elucid ($55M); Eko; reimbursement consultancies; Health Tech Investment Act stuck in committee",
  "wedge": "Reimbursement-readiness service for FDA-cleared AI vendors: map products to SaMS codes and New Technology APCs, model payment, and build the utilisation and outcomes evidence CMS says it will use for long-term valuation.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "CMS proposes SaMS payment frameworks (WSGR, 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.wsgr.com/en/insights/cms-proposes-payment-frameworks-for-software-as-a-medical-service.html"
   },
   {
    "title": "CMS floats AI payment category (Becker's, Jul 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cms-floats-new-medicare-payment-category-for-ai-diagnostic-software-6-notes/"
   },
   {
    "title": "SaMS interim payment policy (Reed Smith, Jul 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.reedsmith.com/our-insights/blogs/health-industry-washington-watch/102n8g3/cms-proposes-an-interim-payment-policy-for-software-as-a-medical-service-in-outpa/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "pld",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "AIUC ($40M A, Sep 2026; $50M cover tied to AIUC-1 audit); Armilla ($25M Lloyd's capacity, Jan 2026); Testudo ($9.25M capacity); Howden Re; law firms; AI governance platforms",
  "wedge": "Defect-defence evidence logging for AI products sold in the EU: tamper-evident records of model versions, updates and outputs that answer PLD disclosure orders and feed insurer underwriting (AIUC, Armilla).",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Member states roll out new PLD rules (Covington, Aug 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.insideprivacy.com/uncategorized/eu-member-states-begin-rolling-out-new-product-liability-rules/"
   },
   {
    "title": "AIUC $40M Series A (Dealroom, Sep 2026)",
    "url": "https://dealroom.co/news/150943-aiuc-lands-40m-series-a-to-insure-ai-agents/"
   },
   {
    "title": "EU PLD: software, AI, supply chains (Gibson Dunn, Mar 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.gibsondunn.com/eu-product-liability-directive-responding-to-software-ai-and-complex-supply-chains"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "aipractice",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Doctronic ($40M B, Mar 2026, Abstract/Lightspeed); Legion Health (Utah psych refills); Garfield.Law (SRA); Utah OAIP sandbox; UK AI Growth Lab legal sandbox (Aug 2026)",
  "wedge": "Take one narrow, high-volume licensed act (e.g. a single refill class or a small-claims letter) through an existing sandbox (Utah OAIP, UK Growth Lab) with a supervising professional, as Garfield.Law did.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Utah expands AI prescription pilots (Telehealth.org, 2026)",
    "url": "https://telehealth.org/news/utah-expands-ai-prescription-pilots-as-early-data-shows-no-safety-issues/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Legal services AI Growth Lab case studies (GOV.UK, 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advisory-ai-growth-lab-legal-services/legal-services-advisory-ai-growth-lab-case-studies"
   },
   {
    "title": "Doctronic $40M Series B (VCA, Mar 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.vcaonline.com/news/2026032402/doctronic-raises-40m-series-b-following-breakthrough-as-first-ai-to-legally-renew-prescriptions-in-the-u-s-/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "codingarms",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 3.5,
  "buyerToday": 4.5,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Abridge, Ambience ($243M, Jul 2025), Microsoft Dragon, Epic (scribes moving into RCM); Cigna/Aetna downcoding; Amperos ($16M A); Cofactor ($4M); Ember ($4.3M); JHU study ($55k grant)",
  "wedge": "A neutral documentation-to-code audit that scores whether AI-raised E/M levels are supported, sold to providers to contest automatic downcoding and to payers as an accepted arbiter.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Coding intensity climbing, payers downcoding (HCC Buddy, Jul 2026)",
    "url": "https://hccbuddy.com/news/ai-documentation-coding-intensity-payer-downcoding-2026"
   },
   {
    "title": "NIHCM grant: AI scribes and billing intensity",
    "url": "https://nihcm.org/grantees/ambient-ai-documentation-and-billing-intensity-evidence-from-commercial-claims"
   },
   {
    "title": "Amperos $16M Series A (Fierce Healthcare)",
    "url": "https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/amperos-health-secures-16m-series-funding-announces-industrys-new-first-ai"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "attention",
  "crowding": 3.5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3.5,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Deezer (detector licensed to Sacem; free scanner); Spotify (75M spam tracks removed, DDEX labels); YouTube; Ircam Amplify; Tuned Global; Beatdapp ($17M, prior knowledge); OpenAI provenance; C2PA",
  "wedge": "Upstream AI-content and stream-fraud screening for distributors, collecting societies and app marketplaces (not the big platforms, which build their own), priced per item ingested and robust to new generators.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Deezer free AI detector across 20 platforms (PPC Land, Jun 2026)",
    "url": "https://ppc.land/deezers-free-ai-music-detector-now-works-across-20-streaming-platforms/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Spotify updates AI policy (TechCrunch, Sep 2025)",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/25/spotify-updates-ai-policy-to-label-tracks-cut-down-on-spam"
   },
   {
    "title": "Best AI music detection tools 2026 (Cyanite)",
    "url": "https://cyanite.ai/blog/best-ai-music-detection-tools-2026/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "emmarkets",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3.5,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "OpenAI (ChatGPT Go free India); Google (AI Pro via Jio, 18 mo); Perplexity (Airtel); Sarvam (~$362M of $415M 2026 Indic AI funding); BharatGen; GreyLabs; AethexAI ($3M pre-seed, Jun 2026)",
  "wedge": "Small, cheap local-language voice agents sold B2B to banks, lenders and telcos (KYC, collections, activation), not consumer chat apps that the labs and telcos give away free.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Sarvam nets 87% of 2026 Indic AI funding (NewsBytes, Oct 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/business/sarvam-nets-87-of-2026-indic-language-ai-funding/tldr"
   },
   {
    "title": "AethexAI $3M pre-seed (Dealroom, Jun 2026)",
    "url": "https://dealroom.co/news/135331-aethexai-raises-3m-pre-seed-to-build-voice-ai-for-africa-and-the-middle/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Free AI tools in India 2026 (DQ India)",
    "url": "https://www.dqindia.com/data-and-ai/free-ai-tools-in-india-are-gemini-chatgpt-perplexity-really-free-in-2026-10965188"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "wearables",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Meta/EssilorLuxottica (94% H1 2026 share; bought Limitless); Google/Samsung Android XR; Apple; Amazon (bought Bee); Xiaomi; Alibaba; Rokid; Even Realities; Plaud",
  "wedge": "Vertical frontline apps (field-service guidance, inspection evidence capture) on Meta's Wearables Device Access Toolkit and Android XR rather than hardware, accepting the platform risk.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Smart glasses growth H1 2026 (9to5Google, Sep 2026)",
    "url": "https://9to5google.com/2026/09/22/smart-glasses-growth-h1-2026/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Meta glasses third-party apps (UC Today, May 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.uctoday.com/immersive-workplace-xr-tech/meta-smart-glasses-sales-surge-third-party-apps/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Meta acquires Limitless (Engadget, Dec 2025)",
    "url": "https://www.engadget.com/ai/metas-latest-acquisition-suggests-hardware-plans-beyond-glasses-and-headsets-212930339.html"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "alwayson",
  "crowding": 4.5,
  "labOverlap": 5,
  "smallTeamFit": 2.5,
  "buyerToday": 2.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Google Gemini Spark; OpenAI Pulse/Dots; Apple, Meta, xAI agents; Instinct ($1B at $10B, Sep 2026); Littlebird ($11M seed); Quill ($6.5M); Poppy ($1.25M)",
  "wedge": "Research the act/ask/stay-silent policy for unattended agents, benchmarked on real inbox and calendar traces; the consumer product itself belongs to labs and a $10B startup.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Personal AI agent startups (Dealroom)",
    "url": "https://dealroom.co/charts/personal-ai-agent-startups"
   },
   {
    "title": "Instinct raises $1B (Reuters via The Star)",
    "url": "https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/09/28/ai-agent-firm-instinct-raises-1-billion-in-latest-funding-round"
   },
   {
    "title": "PRISM proactive agents (arXiv 2602.01532)",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/html/2602.01532v1"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "firmmodels",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 3.5,
  "buyerToday": 3.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Thinking Machines Tinker; River AI ($1.1B, Aug 2026); Prime Intellect ($130M); Deep Cogito ($43M A); Bespoke Labs ($40M); Together post-training; OpenAI RFT",
  "wedge": "Sell the step platforms skip: turn one vertical's workflow logs (e.g. asset-manager SQL and document tasks) into graders and evals, then post-train on rented Tinker-style platforms.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "One year of Tinker (Thinking Machines)",
    "url": "https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/one-year-of-tinker/"
   },
   {
    "title": "River AI raises $1.1B (Reuters via The Star)",
    "url": "https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/08/11/xai-co-founder039s-startup-river-ai-raises-11-billion-to-expand-custom-ai-tools"
   },
   {
    "title": "Bespoke Labs raises $40M (SiliconANGLE)",
    "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2026/07/06/ai-post-training-startup-bespoke-labs-raises-40m-funding/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "airgap",
  "crowding": 3.5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 2,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 2.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Google GDC + Cirrascale Gemini appliance; OpenAI-Dell on-prem (May 2026); Cohere ($500M); Prem (seeking $100M at $500M+); EdgeRunner ($17.5M); Articul8 ($70M B)",
  "wedge": "Offline operations for air-gapped deployments: evaluation and drift checks, signed update bundles and audit trails, sold to the integrators who install the appliances.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Gemini on a single air-gapped server (VentureBeat via pulse.bot)",
    "url": "https://www.pulse.bot/ai/news/googles-gemini-can-now-run-on-a-single-air-gapped-server-and-vanish-when-you-pull-the-plug-189925ad-271f-454e-8cdd-c3250d70e8e0/"
   },
   {
    "title": "OpenAI-Dell on-prem vs Anthropic-AWS",
    "url": "https://andrew.ooo/answers/openai-dell-on-prem-vs-anthropic-aws-vs-microsoft-azure-may-2026/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Prem seeks $100M Series A (SiliconANGLE)",
    "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2026/06/18/prem-seeks-100m-series-export-bans-boost-sovereign-ai-demand/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "agentops",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 4.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3.5,
  "researchOpenness": 2,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Microsoft Agent 365 ($15/user, GA May 2026); Workday Agent SoR; AWS agent registry; Hush Security ($30M A); Oasis ($120M B); Aigentsphere ($4M seed)",
  "wedge": "A cross-vendor ledger of per-agent cost against outcome, so a mid-market firm can tell which agents earn their spend; Agent 365 is Microsoft-centric and priced per user.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Agent 365 GA at $15/user (claw-times)",
    "url": "https://claw-times.pages.dev/articles/microsoft-agent-365-ga-may-2026-15-dollars-per-user-ai-agent-governance/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Hush Security $30M Series A (Dealroom)",
    "url": "https://dealroom.co/news/141527-hush-security-lands-30m-series-a-to-govern-enterprise-ai-agents/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Agent System of Record (Workday)",
    "url": "https://www.workday.com/en-us/artificial-intelligence/agent-system-of-record.html"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "toolreg",
  "crowding": 3.5,
  "labOverlap": 3.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Official MCP registry (GitHub, Anthropic, Microsoft); Smithery; PulseMCP; Cisco MCP Scanner; Snyk/Invariant; OpenAI-Promptfoo; Onyx ($40M seed, unverified)",
  "wedge": "Continuous behavioural attestation for MCP servers: sandbox-run each listing, diff its declared tools against what it actually does on every version, and sell the trust scores as a feed to gateways and registries.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "MCP registry by the numbers (devtoolhub)",
    "url": "https://devtoolhub.com/mcp-registry-by-the-numbers/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Cisco MCP Scanner (Cloud Wars)",
    "url": "https://cloudwars.com/ai/cisco-secures-mcp-servers-with-multiple-scanning-engines-supply-chain-protections/"
   },
   {
    "title": "AI agent security acquisition wave (DEV)",
    "url": "https://dev.to/luckypipewrench/the-ai-agent-security-acquisition-wave-what-it-means-for-buyers-1e73"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "aiseo",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 2.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3.5,
  "buyerToday": 4.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Profound ($334.5M total; $180M D at $1.8bn, Sep 2026); Bluefish ($63M); Peec AI ($27.5M); Evertune ($19M); Adobe-Semrush ($1.9bn); HubSpot-XFunnel; Sitecore-Scrunch",
  "wedge": "Statistically sound visibility measurement (repeated sampling, confidence intervals, causal tests of which content moves model answers); another dashboard would enter a saturated market.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "GEO startups (Dealroom)",
    "url": "https://dealroom.co/charts/generative-engine-optimization-startups"
   },
   {
    "title": "Don't Measure Once (arXiv 2604.07585)",
    "url": "https://arxiv.deeppaper.ai/papers/2604.07585v1"
   },
   {
    "title": "LLM brand recommendations random (WARC)",
    "url": "https://www.warc.com/content/feed/llms-produce-random-results-when-listing-brand-recommendations/en-GB/11352"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "proagents",
  "crowding": 5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 5,
  "researchOpenness": 2.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Harvey ($550M at $15.5bn, Sep 2026); Legora (~$8.8bn, seeking $10bn); Basis ($100M at $1.15bn); Limitless Labs ($20M); Anthropic and OpenAI finance/legal plugins",
  "wedge": "Pick a smaller regulated profession (loss adjusting, building surveying, non-US patent work) where access to the sign-off workflow and data is the moat, and sell reviewed drafts there.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Harvey vs Legora valuation race (Artificial Lawyer)",
    "url": "https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/09/09/harvey-vs-legora-the-valuation-race/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Basis secures $100M (SiliconANGLE)",
    "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2026/02/24/ai-accounting-startup-basis-secures-100m-1-15b-valuation-firms-adopt-agent-based-workflows/"
   },
   {
    "title": "OpenAI and Anthropic battle in finance and legal (TechRadar)",
    "url": "https://www.techradar.com/pro/openai-and-anthropic-are-battling-to-conquer-the-ai-market-in-finance-and-legal"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "ambientdocs",
  "crowding": 3,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 3.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Jump ($80M B, Feb 2026); Zocks ($45M B); Beam Magic Notes (UK councils); Axon Draft One (police); Microsoft Copilot transcription",
  "wedge": "Independent accuracy assurance for AI-drafted statutory records (social care, police, advice): test tools against recordings, flag inserted content, and give councils and compliance teams evidence for governance.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Jump and Zocks Series B (InvestmentNews)",
    "url": "https://www.investmentnews.com/advisor-tech/jump-and-zocks-raise-dueling-series-b-funding-rounds/265992"
   },
   {
    "title": "AI tools risk errors in care records (CARE)",
    "url": "https://care.org.uk/news/2026/02/social-workers-ai-tools-risk-errors-in-care-records"
   },
   {
    "title": "AI note-taker adoption soars (Financial Planning)",
    "url": "https://www.financial-planning.com/news/jump-zocks-top-category-as-ai-note-taker-adoption-soars"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "sycophancy",
  "crowding": 1.5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3.5,
  "buyerToday": 2,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Labs in-house (Anthropic Bloom/Petri, OpenAI post-GPT-4o fixes); academic benchmarks (ELEPHANT, SYCON-Bench, syco-bench); no funded commercial vendor found",
  "wedge": "Measure sycophancy in deployed advice settings (finance, health, coaching) and link the scores to real user outcomes; nobody sells this and the labs only test single turns.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions (arXiv 2510.01395)",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01395"
   },
   {
    "title": "Moral endorsement benchmark (VentureBeat)",
    "url": "https://venturebeat.com/ai/after-gpt-4o-backlash-researchers-benchmark-models-on-moral-endorsement-find-sycophancy-persists-across-the-board"
   },
   {
    "title": "Enterprise sycophancy products search",
    "url": "https://wphillipmoore.github.io/the-infrastructure-mindset/research/R0041-enterprise-sycophancy/2026-04-01/Q001-vendor-sycophancy-products/searches/S05-benchmarks-evaluation/search-log"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "abstain",
  "crowding": 2.5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3.5,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "OpenAI (abstention-aware evals); Oxford BAS metric; Goodfire ($150M B at $1.25bn, interpretability); hallucination-detection vendors (AIMon)",
  "wedge": "Abstention and selective-prediction evals with asymmetric scoring for multi-step agent tasks and a firm's own question sets, where confident errors are the real cost.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Why language models hallucinate (OpenAI)",
    "url": "https://openai.com/index/why-language-models-hallucinate/"
   },
   {
    "title": "BAS confidence metric (arXiv 2604.03216)",
    "url": "https://www.alphaxiv.org/abs/2604.03216"
   },
   {
    "title": "Calibrated abstention (Tian Pan)",
    "url": "https://tianpan.co/blog/2026-04-27-calibrated-abstention-i-dont-know"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "tastegrader",
  "crowding": 2.5,
  "labOverlap": 4,
  "smallTeamFit": 3.5,
  "buyerToday": 2.5,
  "researchOpenness": 4.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Meta MSL (rubric decomposition); OpenAI and Anthropic in-house; Mercor ($350M at $10B, prior knowledge); Surge AI; Scale; academic RLMR and rubric-curriculum RL",
  "wedge": "Graders fitted to one writer's or brand's voice from a small corpus of accepted and rejected edits, stress-tested for reward hacking when used as an RL reward.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "WritingPreferenceBench (arXiv 2510.14616)",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14616"
   },
   {
    "title": "Rethinking rubric generation (Meta MSL)",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/html/2602.05125v1"
   },
   {
    "title": "Rubric Curriculum RL (ICML 2026)",
    "url": "https://icml.cc/virtual/2026/poster/64634"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "deskill",
  "crowding": 1.5,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 2.5,
  "researchOpenness": 4.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Anthropic (RCT, learning modes, Academy); OpenAI Study Mode; Scholé AI ($3M, Feb 2026); academic work (MIT Caosun and Aral; Lancet endoscopy)",
  "wedge": "Longitudinal studies of unaided-skill retention under agentic tools, plus an AI-off competence check firms can embed in their workflows; a product once regulators ask for proof.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "AI assistance and coding skills (Anthropic)",
    "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills"
   },
   {
    "title": "The Augmentation Trap (arXiv 2604.03501)",
    "url": "https://www.emergentmind.com/papers/2604.03501"
   },
   {
    "title": "Colonoscopy deskilling (STAT)",
    "url": "https://www.statnews.com/2025/08/12/ai-deskilling-doctors-colonoscopy-study-lancet/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "coord",
  "crowding": 3.5,
  "labOverlap": 4.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Anthropic Agent Teams (Opus 4.6); Google A2A (150+ orgs); Isara ($94M, $650M val, OpenAI-backed, Mar 2026); Sycamore ($65M seed); BAND ($17M seed); Lua ($5.8M); Modern Relay ($3M seed)",
  "wedge": "Research on when a team beats its best agent: handoff and context-transfer protocols plus verifier designs that contain error cascades on sequential tasks, packaged as a topology selector that existing orchestrators can call.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Towards a science of scaling agent systems (Google Research, Jan 2026)",
    "url": "https://research.google/blog/towards-a-science-of-scaling-agent-systems-when-and-why-agent-systems-work/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Isara raises $94M, OpenAI-backed (The Next Web, Mar 2026)",
    "url": "https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-isara-ai-agent-swarms-650m-valuation"
   },
   {
    "title": "BAND raises $17M seed (IT Brief, Apr 2026)",
    "url": "https://itbrief.news/story/band-raises-usd-17-million-for-multi-agent-ai-layer"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "orgevals",
  "crowding": 2,
  "labOverlap": 3,
  "smallTeamFit": 4.5,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Academic only: TeamBench (MIT/Google, May 2026); EntCollabBench (May 2026); TheAgentCompany (CMU); MultiAgentBench. Eval vendors (Braintrust, Scale, Vals) are solo-agent focused",
  "wedge": "Build permissioned multi-role, long-horizon organisation environments (departments, handoffs, mixed human-agent review) scored on end-state, and sell them as eval/RL environments to labs and as stack-selection tests to enterprises.",
  "wedgeType": "research",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "TeamBench: agent coordination under role separation (arXiv, May 2026)",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/html/2605.07073v1"
   },
   {
    "title": "EntCollabBench: role-specialised enterprise agents (May 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.emergentmind.com/papers/2605.08761"
   },
   {
    "title": "Scaling agent systems (Google Research, Jan 2026)",
    "url": "https://research.google/blog/towards-a-science-of-scaling-agent-systems-when-and-why-agent-systems-work/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "smallfirms",
  "crowding": 4,
  "labOverlap": 3.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 4.5,
  "buyerToday": 3.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "n8n ($180M C, $2.5B, Oct 2025); Gumloop ($50M B, Mar 2026); Lindy; Relevance AI; lab agent products (Claude agent teams, OpenAI agents); AI-native services firms",
  "wedge": "Be the few-operator firm: an agent-run service business in one narrow vertical (for example bookkeeping, claims or compliance filings) where a handful of operators directing agents undercut a staffed incumbent on price.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Startups are hiring less and raising more (Revelio Labs, Oct 2025)",
    "url": "https://www.reveliolabs.com/news/tech/startups-are-hiring-less-and-raising-more"
   },
   {
    "title": "AI takes startup jobs? Series A median 15 FTE (Carta, Mar 2025)",
    "url": "https://carta.com/data/newsletter-ai-takes-startup-jobs/"
   },
   {
    "title": "Solo founders 36% in 2025 (Carta, Feb 2026)",
    "url": "https://carta.com/data/linkedin-solo-founder-explosion-2016-2025/"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "backstop",
  "crowding": 1.5,
  "labOverlap": 1,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 3,
  "researchOpenness": 4,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "US DOE ($3.26bn AEP Texas loan, Jul 2026; $1.6bn AEP guarantee); US gov 9.9% Intel ($8.9bn); CPP ($1.75bn EQT/EdgeConneX); Blue Owl/Meta $27.3bn 144A; MSCI, Moody's, S&P (generic risk)",
  "wedge": "An AI-infrastructure exposure map linking SPVs, 144A bonds, private credit and state loans or guarantees to named pension funds and insurers, sold to trustees, consultants, regulators and short-side analysts.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "DOE finalizes $3bn loan for Texas grid data center demand (Washington Examiner, Jul 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/?p=4640320"
   },
   {
    "title": "US equity stakes in Intel, MP Materials (Tech Insider, 2026)",
    "url": "https://tech-insider.org/trump-us-equity-stake-ai-companies-2026/"
   },
   {
    "title": "CPP invests $1.75bn in EQT AI buildout (Bloomberg Gov, Jul 2026)",
    "url": "https://news.bgov.com/private-equity/cpp-invests-1-75-billion-in-eqts-ai-infrastructure-buildout"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "offshore",
  "crowding": 4.5,
  "labOverlap": 3.5,
  "smallTeamFit": 4,
  "buyerToday": 4.5,
  "researchOpenness": 3,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Sierra ($950M E, ~$15B, 2026); Decagon ($250M D, $4.5B, Jan 2026); Sola ($17.5M A, a16z); 14.ai ($3M seed); TCS, Infosys, Accenture, Concentrix pivoting to AI delivery",
  "wedge": "Take one still-offshored back-office process (freight invoice audit, medical coding, claims intake) and sell it outcome-priced, or become the AI transition partner converting mid-tier BPOs from seat-based to outcome contracts.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Top IT firms' headcount falls over 7,000 in FY26 (IANS, Apr 2026)",
    "url": "https://ianslive.in/top-it-firms-hiring-turns-negative-as-headcount-falls-over-7000-in-fy26--20260425104000"
   },
   {
    "title": "Top five IT firms add 16,055 in H1 FY27 (Angel One, Oct 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.angelone.in/news/stocks/indian-it-stocks-in-focus-top-five-firms-add-16-055-employees-in-h1fy27-but-demand-recovery-remains-uncertain"
   },
   {
    "title": "AI displacement looms large, Philippines (Daily Tribune, Jul 2026)",
    "url": "https://tribune.net.ph/2026/07/26/ai-displacement-looms-large"
   }
  ]
 },
 {
  "box": "stablerails",
  "crowding": 4.5,
  "labOverlap": 2,
  "smallTeamFit": 3,
  "buyerToday": 4,
  "researchOpenness": 2.5,
  "depth": "light",
  "players": "Tether (~$184B); Circle (~$74B); Stripe (Bridge $1.1bn; Tempo $500M A at $5B); Coinbase x402; KAST ($80M A, Mar 2026); Tazapay ($36M B); Conduit ($36M); TransFi ($19M)",
  "wedge": "Compliance, reconciliation and payout-ops tooling for one weak-currency corridor or vertical (freelancer payouts, SME import payments) built on Bridge or Circle rails, where incumbents are horizontal.",
  "wedgeType": "startup",
  "sources": [
   {
    "title": "Stablecoin market cap tracker (Spark, Aug 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.spark.money/tools/stablecoin-market-cap-tracker"
   },
   {
    "title": "McKinsey/Artemis: ~1% of volume is real payments (Apr 2026)",
    "url": "https://www.kucoin.com/news/flash/mckinsey-and-artemis-report-only-1-of-stablecoin-35t-volume-is-real-payments"
   },
   {
    "title": "Stripe-backed Tempo raises $500M at $5B (The Block, Oct 2025)",
    "url": "https://www.theblock.co/post/375152/stripe-tempo-500-million-series-a-thrive"
   }
  ]
 }
]