Author: Avichal Garg, Curtis Spencer, Ken Deeter, Maria Shen, Ren
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
Introduction: Electric Capital's 2026 investment roadmap marks a turning point in the shift of "user sovereignty" from concept to large-scale implementation.
The author aptly points out that against the backdrop of a global collapse in institutional trust and the concentration of power in AI, encryption technology is not merely a financial tool, but a core infrastructure for safeguarding individual sovereignty. From private AI agents capable of running on local desktops to stablecoin finance that allows 4 billion people to access dollar yields, the article outlines 26 specific investment opportunities across 6 major sectors.
The full text is as follows:
The conditions are ripe for user-owned technology.
A global collapse in trust in institutions is underway. People have lost faith in institutions that were once central to economic, political, and social life, including governments, banks, media, and schools. This is not a short-term trend, nor a response to an isolated event, but a long-term shift in expectations. People no longer assume that institutions are neutral, reliable, or aligned with their interests.
Distributed systems and cryptography provide developers with new tools that can operate without trust. These techniques are designed to operate in adversarial environments: they assume that the actors may be malicious, the software must be verifiable, and the system should still function properly when the adversary fails.
AI makes this shift towards "trust-minimized systems" more urgent and likely than ever before. AI not only centralizes power but also reduces the cost of building. Now, one person can complete in hours what previously took teams months to build. This puts pressure on intermediaries, opens up new possibilities for developers, and increases the demand for user-controlled infrastructure.
User-owned systems defend freedom. They minimize trust by returning control to the user. These systems cannot be unilaterally altered. They allow people to build them without requesting permission. When done well, these systems allow users to opt out of systems that no longer serve them without losing any functionality.
Electric Capital invests $1 million to $20 million in user-owned technology, empowering people with control, privacy, and access.
Since 2018, we have been committed to investing in systems that reduce reliance on intermediaries. We started with programmable money. Today, the same principles and technologies are being applied to software, data, marketplaces, and many other areas.
If you're building in these areas, we'd love to invest in your ideas. For more in-depth background on our arguments, please read our 2018 article on reinventing trust intermediaries and programmable money .
This article outlines 26 opportunities across key sectors in 2026.
These opportunities encompass user-owned systems, globally accessible markets, entertainment built on new financial primitives, and the infrastructure preparing the world for building software for AI. But they all have one thing in common: they all explore how power, access, and ownership should operate in a world where AI is ubiquitous and deeply embedded.
These opportunities are distributed across six core areas:
Personal Software: AI makes it possible to build tools tailored to your life, rather than simply adapting to SaaS (Software as a Service) built for the average user. Private agents, encrypted collaboration, and locally running software are now not only feasible, but increasingly necessary.
Agent-Focused Infrastructure: As AI agents become the primary developers of software, the existing development stack will become ineffective. New primitives are needed for testing, deployment, payment, data access, and collaboration between agents.
Fintech & DeFi: Stablecoins have given over 4 billion people access to the US dollar. Now, they need yields, equity exposure, insurance, and more. The demand for globalized, programmable, and accessible financial infrastructure is accelerating.
Finance as Entertainment: The younger generation views the market as entertainment. Trading is fast, social, and fun. This has transformed financial products and opened doors to new markets.
The Metaverse Revival: World Models and Generative AI are drastically reducing the cost of building immersive, personalized environments. People will step into experiences built around themselves, rather than passively consuming content. Opportunities exist in building platforms that simplify world creation and empower users to control how they share, store, and monetize their data within these worlds.
New Crypto Primitives and Applications: Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and Proof-of-Work (PoW) are maturing, opening up space for new consensus models. Zero-knowledge (ZK) systems and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) are becoming practical. These primitives free up new design space: consensus tied to human or physical input, infrastructures with default privacy, and applications built for regulated entities, energy markets, and even new jurisdictions.
If you are building in one of these areas, please contact us at info@electriccapital.com .
Personal Software
For the first time, individuals are able to build software to their exact needs, no longer limited to products offered by companies. As AI agents can now handle complex workflows such as reading emails, scheduling meetings, and managing documents, new demands arise for data privacy, data ownership, and data persistence. Encryption-enabled systems can make these tools private, persistent, and capable of multiplayer collaboration.
Our specific ideas regarding our investment:
Private AI agents: People need to run AI on sensitive data in a secure manner.
Possible forms: An AI assistant that automates your personal workflows while protecting your privacy. It connects to your health and financial records and provides AI insights. The AI model runs in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) or computing network, and inbound queries are anonymized. When the response is returned, your data is not visible to the enterprise provider or malicious actors.
Encrypted collaboration spaces: These are spaces where people need to collaborate privately with others, including humans and agents. Remember, the "cloud" is just someone else's computer.
Possible forms: Shared workspaces for friends, family, or small businesses. Finances, documents, and tasks are synchronized via peer-to-peer (P2P) storage solutions. Selective disclosure authorizes agents to access specific types of data. No account creation is required, no company can read, store, or use sensitive data for training, and offline work is supported.
Desktop agent: People need to automate the processing of data on their local computers.
Possible form: An agent running on your local desktop, responsible for reading your emails, composing replies, creating agendas, and managing your life. This idea could be expanded into a new type of desktop operating system in an AI-first world.
Private payment services: A way for people to pay for software services without needing to identify themselves.
Possible forms: Purchasing VPNs, games, cloud storage, or AI computing power without an account. You pay based on usage, metered by the service, and payments are settled in stablecoins via x402 or similar protocols. The service provider knows someone has paid and how much, but not the payee's identity.
Agent-Focused Infrastructure
Agents will write most of our code and perform most of our knowledge work. Key takeaways are: (1) Software tools need to be refactored from scratch because AI-generated code introduces new failure modes. (2) Development will shift towards internalization because custom software is now economically viable. (3) Agents need new tracks to transact with each other. (4) Businesses that were once limited by human labor can suddenly scale. These ideas capture the opportunities presented by these second-order effects.
Our specific ideas regarding our investment:
AI-native compute infrastructure: The ability for companies to test, isolate, and roll back AI-generated changes at the infrastructure level.
Possible form: AWS or GCP rewritten for the agent. The agent writes code in a sandbox, safely tests it against production data, and deploys automatically with rollback if issues occur. The entire process assumes the code comes from the agent, not a human.
End-to-end product development tools: These are tools that enable non-technical staff to bridge the gap between ideas and usable software.
Possible form: A platform where users specify business goals, data sources, and expected results. The system generates plans, designs, code, and a working product. The system eliminates the need for technical translation, allowing non-technical users to go directly from "idea" to "deployable product" in hours rather than months.
Agent-enabled commerce: Agents need to buy and sell autonomously without human identity or bank account.
Possible form: An API marketplace where agents purchase services from other agents. Discovery, negotiation, and pay-per-call (PPC) are handled using protocols such as x402, with instant settlement via stablecoins.
Data networks and marketplaces: AI needs data infrastructure that can compensate contributors and give them control over the use of the data.
Possible forms: A network where users share medical records, spending patterns, investment behavior, or creative works for AI training. Contributors set permissions and are compensated as their data improves the model. AI companies obtain the financial data they need with clear traceability.
Scaling professional services: Service-oriented enterprises need AI-native operations to achieve expansion beyond the limitations of human labor.
Possible forms: A law firm where each lawyer has an AI assistant responsible for research, drafting, and document review. A firm that once served 1,000 clients can now serve 100,000. Any client service industry—lawyers, architects, marketers, accountants, financial advisors—can be restructured with AI at its core.
Fintech & DeFi
With over 4 billion people and millions of businesses facing currency risks actively seeking dollar access through stablecoins, this represents the largest expansion of the dollar's network effect in decades. As stablecoins provide dollar access to individuals globally—growing from $3 billion in 2019 to over $300 billion today—millions of new dollar holders need more than just digital cash. They need yields, investment opportunities, and financial services. There is a growing opportunity in financial products that grant users ownership and global access.
Our specific ideas regarding our investment:
Non-crypto correlated yield: Stablecoin holders need a yield that does not decrease as the price of Bitcoin (BTC) falls.
Possible form: A platform that brings revenue from real-world infrastructure to stablecoin holders. Revenue could come from data center project bonds, solar installations, and electric vehicle (EV) charging networks—projects with predictable cash flows that are unrelated to the crypto market.
Globally accessible equities: Global investors need direct access to overseas opportunities with low friction and low cost.
Possible form: A financial product that replicates equity ownership, offers price exposure, has no funding rate, and never expires. Philippine traders could construct portfolios of US tech stocks, while Canadians could build exposure to South Korean semiconductors.
New forms of insurance: Businesses need rapid and transparent protection against operational risks that traditional insurance cannot provide.
Possible forms: A platform that utilizes prediction markets to create new insurance products. Hotel chains could purchase hurricane protection for their Florida properties; ski resorts could hedge against the risk of a mild winter. Capital providers offer liquidity in exchange for uncorrelated returns.
On-chain commodity markets: Commodity markets that require 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and global access.
Possible form: A market for trading energy storage capacity. Battery storage capacity is a potential entry point because data centers require reliable power and are investing in energy storage to reduce their dependence on the grid and integrate renewable energy. Data centers with excess energy storage capacity can sell it to nearby facilities during peak demand periods. Grid operators can trade capacity based on seasonal demand.
Protected DeFi assets: Institutions need to deploy their assets in DeFi networks that are secure even in the event of a hack.
Possible forms: A wrapped version of ETH that can be revoked if the protocol is compromised (e.g., GuardedETH). A trusted committee reviews the exploit and can revert GuardedETH transactions without moving the underlying ETH. Legitimate transactions proceed normally.
Finance as Entertainment
The younger generation views financial markets as a meritocratic alternative to traditional paths. When they engage with the markets, they reimagine them, transforming them into entertainment. They trade like they're playing a game: they seek high-adrenaline trades with fast-paced feedback loops in easily learnable and accessible markets. Fast-turnover products like zero-days-to-expiration options (0DTEs), which can settle within hours, now account for over 55% of S&P 500 index options trading volume. Markets with extremely low barriers to entry, where anyone can bet on news headlines, saw trading volume reach $44 billion in 2025, a fivefold increase from the previous year. They also turn their trading into content: positions are discussed in real-time on Discord, profits and losses are shared on TikTok, and portfolios are evaluated on Twitch. When markets become entertainment, there is a wealth of opportunity for platforms that, like users, view financial data as engaging and interactive content.
Our specific ideas regarding the investment:
Spectator capital: The means by which live stream viewers participate in the outcome in an economic way.
Possible form: A platform that allows viewers to stake on live stream content. Engagement would make watching more fun, but currently viewers are limited to tipping and subscriptions. The platform could allow reality show viewers to stake on predictions of who will be eliminated, or to copy trades as the streamer shares trading sessions.
Opinion markets: Prediction market platforms need markets that settle based on collective beliefs rather than just events.
Possible format: A platform that generates market-ranked lists. Users stake positions on how they believe others would rank these items. The platform could create lists such as "Best Pizzas in New York City," "Top Wines Under $20," "Most Influential Movies of the Decade," or "Best AI Development Tools," all market-ranked. Lists are settled weekly based on stake weights.
Drama launchpads: Since individual storytellers can produce series cheaper than studios, they need funding and distribution platforms.
Possible format: A user-generated content (UGC) platform for short-form dramas. Creators use AI video tools to create series: gangster boyfriend saga, secret billionaire reveal, revenge thriller. Fans use tokens to unlock series and tip creators directly. Creators are paid based on viewership. ReelShort generated over $700 million in revenue in Q1 2025 with its low-budget studio productions. The platform combines YouTube's UGC content with ReelShort's video format.
Metaverse Revival
The construction of immersive digital worlds is now economically viable. Over the past two years, AI models for images, videos, and simulations have advanced rapidly, significantly reducing the cost of creating assets and environments. Individual creators can now build content that previously required an entire game studio. Simultaneously, the demand for personalized, interactive content is accelerating: Dispatch, a “choose your own path” TV/game hybrid, sold 3.3 million copies in three months, generating $85 million in revenue with a 98% positive review rate. Roblox saw a 70% year-over-year increase in daily active users (DAU) and paid creators $428 million in Q3 2025 alone. Personalized, AI-driven character chat applications like Character AI are also demonstrating strong early demand for personalized entertainment. These new environments will not only entertain users but also generate rich, structured interactive data for world models and robotics.
Our specific ideas regarding the investment:
World compiler: A tool that individual creators without specialized skills can use to translate natural language into a fully interactive 3D environment.
Possible form: A platform that translates natural language into a fully interactive 3D world. Building 3D environments still requires specialized skills in modeling, physics, and NPC behavior, but AI can break down this barrier. Creators describe a world, and the system constructs it. Assets, physics, NPC logic, and memory are all handled automatically by the system. Individual creators can deliver a rich virtual environment in days, rather than years.
Procedural narrative engine: Players need a story that allows them to adapt and never ends.
Possible form: A platform that generates player-specific stories in real time. Linear stories always have an ending, but players want an experience that adapts to them and continues. Users enter a detective universe where each case is unique to them. Characters remember past interactions, plot twists react to their choices, and the story never runs dry.
The "World-as-dataset" platform: World models and robotic systems require diverse interactive data. Consumer-grade immersive environments continuously generate this data, but currently, no one is capturing it.
Possible form: A virtual reality (VR) game where each player's interactions are instrumented. How users navigate rooms, pick up objects, and interact with characters becomes training data for the robot. Users can choose to join and set permissions for which data to share, and receive compensation. AI companies thus obtain realistic human behavioral data that they cannot generate synthetically.
New Crypto Primitives & Applications
Cryptographic primitives are no longer confined to the theoretical realm. Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and Proof-of-Work (PoW) have demonstrated their resilience in large-scale applications. Zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs are moving from research to production systems. Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) is becoming faster and easier to use. As these foundational technologies mature, they create new opportunities for developers to build systems that prioritize privacy, embed real-world inputs into consensus, and support collaboration in traditional systems such as energy markets or governments.
Our specific ideas regarding our investment:
Human time as consensus: Blockchain networks need to be anchored to consensus mechanisms based on human effort rather than just capital.
Possible forms: "Proof of Useful Work," where consensus requires completing tasks with external value, such as labeling data or verifying real-world events. Participation rights stem from demonstrated capabilities, not merely from staking.
Physical resource networks: Small infrastructure operators need collaborative systems to make their contributions economically justifiable.
Possible forms: Energy networks where production or storage levels serve as consensus weights, aligning grid stability with network security. Sensor networks anchored to physical measurement data such as weather, water quality, or infrastructure monitoring.
Privacy-native L1s: Blockchains that require default privacy in healthcare, enterprise, regulated finance, and many other industries.
Possible form: Confidential State Machines that perform computations on encrypted data by default. Current blockchains are transparent by default, but many entities (such as healthcare institutions, businesses, and regulated financial institutions) are legally unable to operate on transparent chains. Validators perform verification through the native ZK architecture or an FHE-based execution environment without viewing the transaction content.
Use-case specific FHE: Organizations often need to collaborate on data without disclosing data to each other.
Possible form: Banks detect suspicious patterns across institutions without sharing customer data. Each bank runs an FHE query on encrypted data from other banks. They can identify accounts that have been in contact with the same suspicious entity without showing each other their customer lists.
Energy contract settlement: Traditional markets need a cryptographic track to establish 24/7 settlement between different participants. Deregulated energy markets are a good entry point, as these markets have become outdated and increasingly strained due to rising energy demand from AI.
Possible form: A shared settlement layer for energy contracts in deregulated markets. Delivery data triggers automatic payments, suppliers see cash flow in real time, and brokers receive their share immediately. No single centralized party can control the ledger.
Crypto-native jurisdictions: Special economic zones and frontier jurisdictions need new ways of thinking about governance and financial infrastructure.
Possible form: A completely new jurisdiction operating on a cryptographic track from day one. Featuring on-chain identity, programmable courts, tokenized capital markets, and regulatory logic based on smart contracts.
