December 2025
As we move through 2025, we’re excited to share perspectives on the trends and shifts in U.S. Early-Stage, Net New Enterprise Technology. We encourage you to explore our key insights below, along with notable updates from our portfolio companies and our research group.
View from the Top: Key Trends and Insights
General office construction spending, after rising steadily and peaking in the 2019–2021 period, has entered a clear and prolonged retreat as hybrid work models, shifting tenant requirements, and tighter capital conditions reduce the economic viability of new office projects. In contrast, data center construction has accelerated rapidly from a modest base, with growth sharply intensifying in recent years in response to escalating AI workloads, cloud adoption, and demand for high-density compute infrastructure. This pronounced divergence in development activity underscores a reorientation of long-term capital toward assets that enable digital and computational scale. For investors, developers, and policymakers, the trend serves as a critical indicator of future value creation, highlighting the rising strategic importance of digital infrastructure relative to traditional commercial real estate.
Across all major safety categories, the comparison demonstrates a substantial performance advantage for autonomous driving relative to human drivers. Waymo’s incident rates for airbag deployments, injury-related events, and police-reported collisions are materially lower than established human benchmarks, with reductions that range from several multiples to an order of magnitude depending on the metric. These results underscore the potential for autonomous systems to meaningfully improve roadway safety by reducing both the frequency and severity of collisions. For policymakers, operators, and investors, the data provides a compelling, evidence-based view into the safety benefits of scaled autonomy and highlights the importance of continued technological advancement, regulatory support, and fleet deployment to realize these public-safety gains at population level.
The multi-year trajectory of global IPO activity reflects a market transitioning from the extraordinary highs of 2021 through a period of correction and recalibration, followed by a steady re-acceleration as capital-markets conditions stabilize. After a pronounced contraction in 2022, issuance levels began to recover in 2023 and continued to build into 2024, signaling a gradual restoration of investor confidence and improved receptivity to new listings. The first half of 2025 demonstrates a materially stronger pipeline, with quarterly contributions showing increased breadth and depth. Notably, Q3 2025 stands out as a particularly robust period, marking one of the strongest quarters of the post-2021 cycle and underscoring a meaningful resurgence in public-market demand.
Global venture-capital allocations from 2019 through the 2025 forecast reveal a clear reordering of investment priorities across major innovation sectors, with software maintaining its position as the dominant recipient of capital and serving as a foundation for broader technological advancement. There have been notable decreases in funding toward areas such as pharma and biotechnology, and transportation. These sectoral dynamics are critical for investors and operators, as they provide a data-driven perspective on where competitive intensity is rising, where structural opportunities are emerging, and how capital is being deployed in response to macroeconomic forces and technological change.
Our Portfolio Company News
Several Cota portfolio companies have achieved notable milestones that we’re excited to share:
Movandi, a semiconductor and systems innovator powering next-generation wireless communications solutions, announced $40 million in strategic funding to accelerate the global deployment of high-performance connectivity infrastructure across 5G, satellite communications, and fixed wireless access. LEARN MORE
CAST AI, a leading Application Performance Automation platform, announced that it has closed an equity investment from global technology and services company Metanet, alongside a credit facility from J.P. Morgan. LEARN MORE
Qu, a leading unified commerce platform for restaurants, was named the Fastest-Growing Company on the 2025 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™. LEARN MORE
Kilo Code, a fast-growing open-source coding agent, announced it has raised $8 million in funding. Cota Capital led the funding round. LEARN MORE
Simbian, an AI Security Operations platform, and SoftBank C&S Corp., announced they have signed their first distributor agreement in Japan, enabling SoftBank C&S to start handling the Simbian AI SOC Agent and other Simbian products for autonomous security operations. LEARN MORE
Farther, a leading intelligent wealth management firm fusing adaptive, proprietary technology with expert financial advisor guidance, was named by the 2025 Deloitte Technology 500 the #1 fastest-growing fintech and the #5 fastest-growing technology company in the nation. Farther, achieved 12,000% revenue growth from 2021 to 2024 and now manages more than $13 billion in client assets. LEARN MORE
Auradine, a leader in blockchain and low-power AI compute solutions, announced its next-generation Teraflux™ Bitcoin mining systems, achieving an exceptional 9.8 J/TH. LEARN MORE
RecVue, a leader in enterprise revenue management solutions, announced AI-Powered Adaptive Invoicing for enterprise billing accuracy and compliance, a capability within RecVue RevOS that detects and resolves billing anomalies before they reach the customer. LEARN MORE
The Evolving CFO Stack in the Age of AI
Finance is entering a new era. The office of the CFO is shifting from manual, software-driven workflows to intelligent systems capable of taking bounded, autonomous actions. AI is already drafting journal entries, flagging spend anomalies, preventing revenue leakage, and accelerating audits—but its adoption raises real questions about accuracy, governance, and ROI. This article breaks down how CFOs are navigating this transition, where AI is delivering measurable value today, and the architectural decisions that will define the next generation of finance organizations. LEARN MORE
How Stablecoins are Changing the Future of Finance: Why They Matter Part: 1
Crypto is known for volatility — but its most powerful innovation may be its most stable. Stablecoins, mostly pegged to the U.S. dollar, combine blockchain speed and programmability with price stability. Moving trillions, enabling global payments, and powering on-chain markets, they’re no longer a niche token — they’re reshaping how money works in the digital age. LEARN MORE
AI-Powered Test Automation and QA: Driving a Smarter, Faster Software Development Lifecycle (Part 1)
AI is reshaping the software ecosystem at breakneck speed — and testing and QA are next. As AI-generated code accelerates development, traditional QA can’t keep pace, shifting attention to a new wave of AI-driven testing tools. From autonomous test generation to intelligent bug prediction and visual validation, AI is turning long-standing QA bottlenecks into solvable problems and accelerating a long-overdue transformation. LEARN MORE
AI-Powered Test Automation and QA: Driving a Smarter, Faster Software Development Lifecycle (Part 2)
AI is rapidly redefining software testing — and the opportunity is shifting from “what’s possible” to “what will win.” In our first article, we outlined how AI is introducing net-new capabilities across the SDLC. Now, we turn to where the real value will be created. This second piece breaks down the most promising subsegments in AI-powered testing and highlights the areas we believe present the strongest opportunities for early-stage investment. LEARN MORE
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