Agentic

89% of all global venture capital in Q1 2026 went to AI companies. Q1 alone nearly matched the prior five quarters of AI deal value combined.

George Bandarian, General Partner at Untapped Ventures, presents the full Q2 2026 State of AI + Autonomous Economy- the live data deck from Boston, Toronto, and NY Tech Weeks - covering the venture landscape, frontier model capabilities, enterprise adoption data, and the Autonomous Economy investment thesis.

In this episode, we go deep into:

The Venture Data: Why 89% of global VC is flowing to AI, what 266 M&A deals in Q1 (up 90% YoY) signals about consolidation, and the $1–3T+ IPO pipeline that could shatter every record on the books

The Model Arms Race: How GPT-5.4 is matching human experts across 44 professions, why Gemini 3.1 Pro hitting 94.3% on GPQA Diamond changes the benchmark conversation, and what it means that the first model was withheld for being too capable to ship

Enterprise Reality: Why 91% of businesses now use AI (up from 55% in 2024), what it means that 60% of C-suite leaders are planning layoffs for non-adopters, and how AI super-users are already 5× more productive than their peers

The Autonomous Economy Thesis: Why agents will hit 1 billion by 2028 and robots by 2040, what that gap means for capital deployment today, and where Untapped is placing its bets

Advice for Founders + Investors: What VCs are actually funding right now, and a three-layer framework for thinking about AI investment exposure at every stage

If you're a founder building in the Autonomous Economy at pre-seed or seed — let's chat: https://bit.ly/4bq7APh

Learn more about Untapped Ventures: https://untapped.ventures

Plus, connect with us here:

George Bandarian — https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/

Untapped Ventures — https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/

George Bandarian, General Partner at Untapped Ventures, brings 10 of his portfolio founders on stage at the 2026 Annual General Meeting in LA — the builders actually making the autonomous economy real across compute, robotics, AI models, longevity, and enterprise agents.

These are the stories of the founders in the trenches.

In this episode, we go deep into:

The Compute Revolution: Why thermodynamic computing could deliver 10,000x energy efficiency gains over GPUs, what scientific quantum advantage actually means (and why Blue Qubit is one of only five companies to have achieved it), and why the current NVIDIA-dominated paradigm simply can't power a world of a billion robots

The Convergence Layer: How on-device foundation models are bringing cloud-quality AI underground, into cars, phones, and factories where connectivity is zero, and why the safety layer for next-gen robotics matters more than the robot itself

Longevity and the End of Pharma as We Know It: Why measuring aging coherence in real time could let us catch cardiovascular disease 20 years before it strikes, how decentralized citizen science is generating more trial data annually than all FDA drug trials combined, and the moonshot company scanning human brains cell by cell to create digital replicas of people

Agentic Experiences at the Enterprise Edge: How AI-native companies are replacing McKinsey-style consulting, why autonomous agents achieved 58% supplier completion in 5 weeks versus 20–30% over two years manually, and what it really means when a single broker can generate 25x the revenue of a traditional one

The Human-in-the-Loop Reality: Why enterprises expect perfection from agents but accept mistakes from humans, and how the best founders are managing that gap right now

Meet the Founders:

Guillaume Verdon — Founder & CEO, Extropic 

Mathias Lechner — Co-Founder & CTO, Liquid AI 

Kasim Abdullahi — Head of GTM, Harper 

Philipp Wehn — Founder & CEO, Nexxa.ai 

Sarah Tang — Founder & CEO, Sluicebox 

Michael Andregg — Founder & CEO, Eon Systems 

Bruno Balen — Founder & CEO, ANI 

Jeff Chen — Founder & CEO, Radicle Science 

Andrew Singletary — Founder & CEO, 3Laws Robotics

Hayk Tepanyan — Founder & CTO, BlueQubit

If you’re in the early innings of building something in AI, especially if you’re figuring things out from first principles—let’s chat: https://bit.ly/UntappedE17ytgb

Learn more about Untapped Ventures: https://untapped.ventures

Plus, connect with us here:

2. George Bandarian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/   

3. Untapped Ventures - https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/

George Bandarian, General Partner at Untapped Ventures, breaks down the Autonomous Economy thesis - a new economic framework where billions of AI agents and robots execute work end-to-end without human involvement - and why this shift  may dwarf every previous technological revolution, from internet to mobile.

What is the Autonomous Economy (AE)? It’s what happens when billions of AI agents and physical robots can transact, decide, and complete work independently - no human in the loop, no approval required. And it’s already beginning.

In this episode, we dive deep into:

The Autonomous Economy Thesis — What it actually means when agents and robots can transact and execute work without any humans involved, and why this is bigger than any AI trend you're currently following

The 5-Layer AE Value Stack — From intelligence and compute substrate to autonomous enterprise experiences, where the next trillion-dollar companies will actually be built

Human In the Loop to No Loop — Why running 14 Claude Code agents at once is just the beginning, and what fully autonomous operations will look like across every industry

The Trust and Money Problem — The massive unsolved challenge of letting agents spend money, and why whoever cracks enterprise-grade financial rails for autonomous systems wins big

What Happens to the Humans — Vinod Khosla's prediction that 80% of jobs will be AI-capable within 4 years, and why George sees displacement as both a crisis and a generational investment opportunity

If you’re in the early innings of building something in AI, especially if you’re figuring things out from first principles—let’s chat: https://bit.ly/UntappedE17ytgb

Learn more about Untapped Ventures: https://untapped.ventures

Plus, connect with us here:

George Bandarian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/   

Untapped Ventures - 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/

Andrew Chen, General Partner at a16z speedrun, joins us on Agentic to discuss what actually gets founders accepted into speedrun and why AI might be bigger than mobile, internet, and cloud combined.

In this episode, we dive deep into:

Speedrun Insider Access - What actually gets founders accepted into a16z's elite accelerator program (hint: it's not what you think)

Building in AI - From industrial AI agents (Nexxa) to consumer products, how founders should approach the AI wave

Growth Playbooks - Network effects, retention curves, and go-to-market strategies that actually work

The Future of Software - What happens when coding becomes as easy as taking a photo? Andrew's vision for disposable apps, meme software, and the death of traditional job titles

If you’re in the early innings of building something in AI, especially if you’re figuring things out from first principles—let’s chat: https://bit.ly/4d25KFy

Learn more about Untapped Ventures: https://untapped.ventures

Plus, connect with us here:

1. Andrew Chen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewchen/

2. George Bandarian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/

3. Untapped Ventures - https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/

We're at the halfway point of 2025, and AI is evolving faster than ever.

In this solo episode, I share Untapped Ventures’ first Request for Startups. It’s a detailed breakdown of the core areas where we’re actively looking to invest. If you're a founder building in AI or exploring ideas, this is the roadmap for what we want to fund next.

I walk through the key themes that reflect our thesis across both Agentic AI and Convergence AI. These are the ideas we believe will drive the next generation of breakout companies.

Inside the episode:
• Why service-as-software will replace traditional SaaS
• How full-stack agentic platforms are reshaping vertical industries
• The rise of outcome-based pricing and what it unlocks
• Where lean AI teams are gaining massive traction
• Why we’re excited about AI converging with biotech, neurotech, energy, defense, and more
• The profiles of founders we love to back

At Untapped, we invest from stealth and pre-salt through seed, writing checks between $500K and $2 million. Whether you're actively raising or still in the idea maze, we want to meet you.

Let’s connect!
George Bandarian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian

Explore further:
1. If in Stealth, let’s chat: https://bit.ly/UntappedE18podS
2. If raising, pitch us: https://bit.ly/UntappedE18pod