Silicon Valley got crowded again. Here are 400 reasons why we’re staying Elsewhere.

Over the last 15 years, we’ve observed venture capital shift from predominantly US-centric to Elsewhere. 

In 2025, we noticed a reversion. Driven by AI, much of venture capital is once again consolidating in the United States. About 79% of funding — a total of $159B — to the sector went to US-based companies in 2025, with San Francisco and the Bay Area alone accounting for 60% ($122B) of global AI investing.

It was also in 2025, however, that we made our 400th investment Elsewhere. In December, Polish satellite developer ICEYE announced €150M in a new equity round led by General Catalyst with participation by Endeavor Catalyst at a €2.4B valuation, marking one of the most notable moments for Europe’s fast-growing defense tech sector.

Today, emerging markets account for 85% of the world’s population, 50% of global GDP, and nearly 67% of global GDP growth over the past decade (2015–25). Yet they attract just 6% of global capital investment. This imbalance is far from ideal, but it underscores why there has never been a more compelling moment to invest in markets that remain deeply undercapitalized relative to their potential. 

Always contrarian, Endeavor Catalyst firmly believes — and is proving — that opportunities for AI and other technologies abound Elsewhere. In fact, we averaged one investment per week in 2025 in companies from Elsewhere markets. These included:

• ElevenLabs (Poland): AI voice generator and voice agents platform valued at $11B.
• ReflectionAI (Greece): Frontier-scale open intelligence systems that rival closed labs like OpenAI who recently secured $2B in funding led by NVIDIA.
• Rain (Puerto Rico): Developer of infrastructure for stablecoin-powered payments that became a unicorn following its $250M Series C round.
• Dexory (Romania): Leveraging robotics and AI to automate warehouse inventory, Dexory has raised a $165M Series C round.
• Runway (Chile): AI image and video generator platform that raised a Series D round at a $3B valuation in April 2025 (and a Series E, less than a year later, that pushed its valuation to $5.3B!).

If you were scanning global tech headlines in January and February, you might have noticed that 2026 also started off strong Elsewhere. Two Ukrainian companies announced significant investment rounds, with Endeavor Catalyst among their backers. 

• Headway develops subscription-based apps for learning, personal development, and cognitive training. The company closed its Series A, the company’s first external funding round, in July 2025, and an extension of that round led by Bullhound Capital — the investment management arm of GP Bullhound, whose portfolio includes Spotify, Klarna, Revolut, and Slack.
• Holywater, an AI media company specializing in microdramas, raised a $22M financing round led by Horizon Capital, targeting US market expansion following an earlier equity investment from Fox Entertainment in October.

Needless to say, we expect the hyper focus on US deals to be short-lived, as AI further democratizes innovation and investors see the potential Elsewhere. And as a co-investment fund, we’re not alone in these markets — the very fact that we co-invest means that international capital is already allocated there.

Our portfolio companies are increasingly attracting global funds that are charting new territory. In 2025, several of the world’s top venture investors entered Endeavor markets for the first time.

• We co-invested alongside Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)  in Zar, a stablecoin company out of Pakistan, representing the firm’s first investment in the country.
• We co-invested alongside TPG’s The Rise Fund in Hala, a fintech company from Saudi Arabia, marking the fund’s debut in the Middle East.
• We co-invested alongside Tidemark in Onfly, a B2B travel tech company born in Brazil, for what was the fund’s first investment in Latin America.

That said, the ultimate proof point for investors investing in these markets will be liquidity. In 2025, our portfolio saw ten liquidity events — up from just one in 2024 — including three acquisitions and seven secondary sales. Returns increase confidence, and patient capital is rewarded.

• Property Finder: From the MENA region, PropertyFinder is the leading digital real estate marketplace. We completed a partial Secondary Sale as part of the company’s $525M strategic investment in September 2025.
• Bending Spoons: From Italy, Bending Spoons is a technology conglomerate that has acquired AOL, Vimeo, Evernote, Eventbrite, WeTransfer, and more. We completed a partial Secondary Sale as part of the company’s recent $710M round at an $11B valuation.
• Contabilizei: Brazil’s largest online accounting firm, Contabilizei, automates tax compliance, bookkeeping, and business registration for SMEs. We completed a full  Secondary Sale as part of its $125M round.
• Tabby: Out of the Middle East, Tabby is a buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) provider and shopping platform. We completed a partial Secondary Sale at a $4.4B valuation.

Liquidity is beginning to resurface in Latin America, and the next wave is forming in markets such as Vietnam, Ukraine, Pakistan, and Nigeria, where Endeavor Catalyst is already deploying capital and expects the next decade of outcomes to take shape.

In 2026, the map for venture capital is undeniably getting bigger. The increasing proof of returns is creating a self-reinforcing cycle that no single macro trend, not even AI’s pull toward Silicon Valley, can reverse. And as capital, talent, and technology become increasingly mobile, the old assumptions about where world-changing businesses must be built are breaking down. 

Elsewhere is no longer just a promise. It’s here — and we firmly believe it’s the future as entrepreneurs seize this generational opportunity to build in their home markets for the world. If 400 investments have taught us anything, it’s that world-class companies aren’t defined by geography, but by the scale of their ambition.