Newsletter | March 2026
March brought the Spring. A lot happened. Let’s catch up.
31 March 2026
Q1 is almost done, and it is a good moment to zoom out and look at where we actually are. The final numbers are in: last year closed as the second-strongest year on record for US venture capital. But the real story is not the headline number, it is the concentration underneath it. A third of the $560B invested in AI over recent years went to just five companies. The rest of the market is competing for what is left.
You might have seen Anthropic’s chart going around. It maps theoretical AI capability against actual usage across industries, and the gap is hard to ignore. Legal, finance, management: enormous potential on paper, real adoption still lagging far behind. That is not a technology problem, it is friction, trust and inertia, and that white space might be the most interesting place to be investing right now.
READ THE RESEARCHAdd geopolitical noise, shifting supply chains and a macro fog that has not fully cleared, and yes, there is a lot of uncertainty out there. But uncertainty is usually where the best bets are made.
Eight weeks to the Summit. This year’s theme, Back to the Future, is about recapturing that spark of optimism, the belief that what feels impossible today is just a technical problem waiting to be solved. The full roadmap for the day is on the official Summit site. We are also hosting an online session on 14 April on building an agentic-first business, with Álvaro Echeverría (SimpliRoute) and Alberto Casares (Constella), moderated by Garo González.
News from our portfolio
Constella’s Andrés Andreu named Resilient CISO of the Year
Resilience is a leadership discipline, not a recovery plan. Constella Intelligence, the digital risk protection company keeping organisations safe from identity-based threats, had a major moment at RSAC.
CEO Andrés Andreu was named Resilient CISO of the Year at the 2026 SC Awards, one of cybersecurity’s most respected recognitions for senior security leaders.
For Andrés, resilience is what drives Constella’s shift from checkbox compliance to a true adversarial mindset. A well-deserved win for Andrés Andreu and the whole team.
Learn moreA quadruple win for the microbiome revolution
It has been a huge month for Tiny Health, the platform helping families optimise their baby’s gut health through at-home microbiome testing, focused on the window that matters most: the first 1,000 days of life.
The Wall Street Journal featured their pioneering work in pediatric microbiomes. Business Insider followed with the founder story of Cheryl Sew Hoy, who was also named to Inc. Magazine’s 2026 Female Founders list, and the company was hand-selected for Fitt Insider’s inaugural Scouting Report. The team is proving that the future of medicine is built on biological feedback loops, not just intuition.
Learn moreBoatsetter: fighting the awe deficit in Forbes
AI is not pulling us away from nature, it might be the best tool to get us back outside. Boatsetter CEO Michael Farb made that case in Forbes this month.
He calls it the awe deficit: the growing disconnection from the world beyond our screens.
By stripping away the friction of boat rentals through data, Boatsetter makes technology work invisibly, so people can focus on what really matters: connection, discovery and presence on the water. More from Michael Farb in the piece.
Learn moreTonic Easy Medical x L’Oréal
Tonic Easy Medical is continuing its partnership with L’Oréal (La Roche-Posay and CeraVe) to bring complex science directly into clinical practice, delivering specialised content in pediatric dermatology and oncology so clinicians have the right insights at the exact moment of care.
As medicine grows more specialised, getting the right knowledge to the right doctor at the right moment is everything. Daniela Seixas and her team are proving that better data leads to better medicine, scaling impact where it matters most: at the frontlines of care.
LEARN MOREPlexigrid: intelligence for the global energy bottleneck
For years, Plexigrid’s founder and CEO Alberto Méndez Rebollo warned that the electricity grid would become the central bottleneck of the energy transition. This March the world caught up, as The Economist placed the grid at the heart of its Energy Transition Summit.
The conversation has moved from whether we need smart grids to how fast we can build them. Plexigrid is leading that charge, turning aging, blind infrastructure into intelligent networks: instead of digging trenches for expensive new cables, it uses AI to unlock hidden capacity in existing wires, so more solar and EVs can connect instantly. More from Alberto Méndez Rebollo.
LEARN MORERecargaPay is building a safety net for 13 million users
Payments first, protection next. RecargaPay is evolving from a leading Brazilian payments platform into a full financial super-app, and its latest move is a 100% digital partnership with Prudential do Brasil to embed loan insurance directly into its credit flow.
In a country where only 18% of the population holds any form of insurance, this integration, powered by 123seguro, is a real step forward in financial inclusion. By offering coverage at the exact moment a user takes out a loan, RecargaPay is providing a safety net for over 13 million customers. More in the announcement.
LEARN MORESidekick featured in the Daily Mail
Sidekick, the UK platform bringing professional wealth management tools to retail investors, published new research featured in the Daily Mail: nearly a third of wealthy Brits are bluffing through major financial decisions, relying on social media and AI instead of experts.
Most of us will have done it: nodded along in an investment conversation without fully following. The confidence tipping point hits around age 33, or once portfolios reach £51k, and that is exactly the gap Sidekick was built to close. Full story in the Daily Mail.
LEARN MORERecommended reads
SVB
If 2025 was about stabilisation, 2026 is about the great reset. A market caught between policy-induced caution and AI-driven aggression, where capital stays selective and private tech has to prove its unit economics before the window closes.
Nicole Feld Strauss
When digital content is infinite and cheap, the feeling becomes the premium product. The experience economy is not about bigger LED walls, it is about emotional architecture: your real business is the memory you leave behind.
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Tens of thousands of AI users across 159 countries, mapping the gap between what people hope AI will do and what it actually delivers. Hope and fear are not opposites, they live in the same person, often around the same feature.
TheVentureCity highlights
Earlier in the month, Laura, Elena and Stephane went to 4YFN, part of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where they connected with startups and met up with friends from all over the world.
Also this month, Stephane and Paolo laced up for SpainCap’s annual solidarity race, finishing in the top 30%, no small feat given the hills. Congrats to both for representing TheVentureCity on the course this year, and a special mention to last year’s champion Elena, who was missed at the starting line.
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