Tech investing still a priority

Technology is the single most heavily weighted sector for us and this is completely by design, given that it has outperformed other key industries so significantly and for so long. Data from the World Bank estimates that the digital economy contributes to more than15 percent of global gross domestic product, and in the past decade it has been growing two and a half times faster than the GDP of the physical world.

Technology has been responsible for creating so many new business models and applications. It is a critical sector for us across our venture capital, growth equity and buyout investment Strategies.

Artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. Everyone is spending a lot of time trying to figure it out and it remains to be seen which companies will emerge as winners. Aside from time and cost efficiencies, it isn’t entirely clear how all AI applications can be monetized, but it is a key theme that we are exploring. The continued migration to cloud solutions remains a hot topic, as does the digitization of payments. I would also point to security infrastructure and, of course, data analytics, which has been a prominent theme throughout multiple fund cycles, and which continues to command a lot of attention due to the sheer volume of data that exists on those investments.

Digital health solutions represent a very interesting area. It isn’t always clear if these investments sit clearly within the healthcare or technology vertical – for us, it depends on the business model – but the digitization of healthcare clearly accelerated significantly during covid-19 and digital health solutions such as telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, personalized healthcare and healthcare analytics are areas where we are spending significant time.

The impact of the tech correction has been limited for us, and that is due to the areas where we have historically focused our efforts and investments. When it comes to venture capital, we tend to focus on the earlier stages – the seed and Series A managers.

We like GPs that are true specialists – those that create white papers and go very deep on subsectors, in a way that enables them to confront founders with a different approach and a new perspective on their industry. That opens doors in a way that generic sourcing never can. But these are things that we have always focused on.