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The Opportunity for Startup Investors

The preceding pages demonstrate clearly: AI Assurance Technology is an industry on the cusp of an impressive growth trajectory. As AI-powered technologies become ever more enmeshed in the modern economy, the risks they bring—if left unaddressed or managed poorly—are likely to develop into system-wide threats. At the same time, this means there is a large market of AI developers, deployers, and regulators who will demand innovative solutions to manage and mitigate AI-related risks. Moreover, large institutional investors are beginning to shift their funding priorities towards funds and companies future-proofing their business with modernised governance, risk management, and compliance initiatives. AIAT solutions in particular will play a central role in this process, stabilising investment risk in a world where diversifying portfolios away from AI risks will no longer be possible. Providing early-stage capital to AIAT entrepreneurs as they begin to enter this emerging field is thus a unique opportunity for investors seeking to accrue high expected returns, while at the same time allowing them to play a vital enabling role in the quest of ensuring AI safety and trustworthiness in the years to come. With this budding ecosystem evolving quickly against the backdrop of accelerating AI developments, and sometimes long lead times for the following actions, we suggest investors make haste as they:

  1. Dedicate staff to gathering market intelligence on contemporary AI risk management imperatives, and the many AIAT solutions that have and will emerge to address them.

  2. Allocate and raise investment capital to finance promising AIAT founders, from early-stage seed funding to growth-stage investments for companies that have established themselves as early movers in the field.

  3. Create opportunities for AIAT founders, or potential founders, to explore and compete for investment funding opportunities, including through accelerator programmes.