Hey there 👋
It's time for another FounderNest Flyby Newsletter, where we help you stay sharp with innovation trends and insights.
In today’s newsletter:
- 🗞️ Quick hits from this week’s news
- 💡 Thoughts from our blog
- 📡 5 emerging trends from our industry radar
- 💼 This week’s digital twins deep dive
- 🤖 Product enhancements: What FounderNest has been busy building recently
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Quick hits.
Short and sweet - news that caught our eye this week.
Princeton energy modelers showed enhanced geothermal systems could furnish up to 20% of U.S. electricity by 2050, leaping to #3 clean-firm resource behind wind and solar if cost curves hold.
CNN reported Apple, Meta and Disney doubling down on immersive concerts and VR sports streams, framing 2025 as the tipping point for mainstream headset entertainment despite past false starts.
IBM’s roadmap unveils “Starling,” a fault-tolerant quantum computer planned for 2029 that will run 20 000× more operations than today’s machines, hosted in a new New York quantum data-center.
Thoughts from our blog.

The bottlenecks killing innovation at scale
New research from 50+ innovation leaders shows most organizations face hidden bottlenecks that derail promising ideas.

Scouting for success: The art of innovation’s ebb and flow
Companies stay innovative by balancing two key approaches: combining proactive scouting of new opportunities with strategic reflection.

12 companies that are focused on AMI
The Advanced Metering Infrastructure market is growing steadily, fueled by $13.6B in public funding, and smart energy demand.

Why 30-slide decks are killing internal innovation
It shouldn’t take 30 slides to approve a $10K experiment, yet in 2025, tight scrutiny and pressure for fast results make this the norm.
Industry radar.
Stay ahead of the curve every newsletter we give you 5 of the hottest topics and trends across our reference industries.
1. Manufacturing
Venture capital in advanced manufacturing soared to €1.1B in 2024, up 63%, with robotics alone pulling in 45% of all funding. Germany leads in deal volume, and M&A exits jumped 50%, but IPOs? Just one in five years.

A sample of advanced manufacturing companies in FounderNest
2. Energy
Global energy investment is set to hit a record $3.3T in 2025, with $2.2T flowing into clean tech like solar and storage systems.
Meanwhile, the World Bank backs the world’s biggest hydropower project with $1B, and next-gen energy tech is reshaping how we power the planet.
3. Aerospace
Space tech startups raised a record $18B+ across 1,200+ rounds through mid-2025, led by massive deals like Apple’s $1.7B bet on Globalstar and Relativity’s $1.25B rocket play. The U.S. leads the charge, but Europe, China, and Japan are rising fast, fueling reusable rockets, space security, and AI-powered satellite tech in one of the hottest markets today.
4. Food production
FoodTech VC funding dropped 59% in 2023, but 2025 is seeing a rebound, especially for startups in sustainable farming, food-as-medicine, and AI-powered supply chains. Investors now demand real traction, climate impact, and clear paths to profit, while late-stage deals, automation tech, and strategic M&As are shaping the future of food.
5. Entertainment and media
The media and entertainment industry is set to hit $46.89B by 2030, fueled by AI-driven content, immersive experiences, and over 146,000 funding rounds averaging $49.3M each. With 456,400 patents, 33M jobs, and rising stars like Fellaz and AI Aware, the sector is booming with innovation, from generative media to blockchain-powered fan economies.
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Deep dive: Industrial digital twins for net-zero manufacturing.
Comprehensive, personalized industry insights - straight from our platform.
Digital-twin deployments have crossed from pilot to scale, driven by EU and US funding calls that tie twin adoption to decarbonization metrics.
- Gartner expects the digital-twin market to reach US $125B by 2030, with manufacturing twins underpinning productivity gains of 30-60% and waste cuts of 20%.
- The SMART USA Institute opened a US $50M call for semiconductor-process twins, offering up to US $20M per project to cut defect rates and strengthen domestic supply chains.
- EU Horizon projects (Industry 4.0 Twin Transition) are funding integrated twins for remanufacturing, robotics and sustainability with budgets of €35-42M per topic.
- Real-time AI/edge adoption: LG Electronics’ Changwon plant’s twin updates every 30 seconds, delivering 17% productivity gain and 30% energy savings, a reference case for SMEs
Find the full research here.

Next-level enhancements boosting product adoption at FounderNest.
We’ve launched a series of game-changing product enhancements that are already driving major impact for innovation teams, M&A and CVC teams! Key updates include an enhanced search, powerful new non-company discovery, and multiple UI improvements to ease the experience with the product. We have also boosted data reliability and introduced a prompt enhancer to speed up company scouting. Plus, our smart analytics are now faster and smoother than ever, delivering an even more seamless user experience.

“The most prominent impact is certainly finding opportunities much faster than before.”
- Thomas Froehlich (Roche)
Thanks for reading! If you want to explore the space for yourself, or any others, you can run your own search directly in FounderNest.
Feel free to suggest a topic for us to dive into next! If you have any questions, feedback, or just want to connect you can get in touch or connect on LinkedIn.