🦄 Our predictions for 2025

✍️ Notes from the Editors

Welcome to 2025!

We hope you had a wonderful and restful holiday season.

Our first order of business for 2025—sharing the second part of our back-to-back holiday special edition newsletters. Today, we’ll be covering everything from our predictions for 2025 to our high-level direction for Unicorner. 

Enjoy our State of the Startup.

- Ethan and Arek 🦄

AI as a co-pilot, not a competitor

Last year, we predicted that legacy industries (ones that still have a lot of manual processes) would expand to use AI to handle otherwise repetitive work. We saw this with startups like Spellbook, which raised its Series A last year to help contract-focused lawyers, and Casca, a YC alum helping process loans.

Both startups are a great segue into what we expect to see in 2025. There’s a shift toward what we’ll call “collaborative debugging,” where AI flags emerging issues and human operators provide the final judgment call. We’re seeing standards pushing for explainable AI, so transparency is top-of-mind: algorithms must justify their decisions in an understandable way, particularly in industries like food production or pharmaceuticals where anything less than a total success rate can be catastrophic.

All this to say, in our opinion, AI is not a threat to jobs in 2025, but rather a co-pilot that handles tedious work and works hand-in-hand with us humans.

The great (de)regulation

In the US, Elon Musk’s proposed DOGE / Department of Government Efficiency, alongside an already regulation-averse administration means that we might see an expansion of finance products that would have been more difficult to launch in the previous regulatory environment.

Our thoughts: expect more crypto and neobanking products in 2025 and beyond, and more growth of existing institutions.

This doesn’t come without its concerns. In just over a year since the FTX collapse, it’s to be reminded that the absence of some regulations can be taken advantage of by bad actors.

Keep an eye on established players who prioritize transparency in these free-for-all periods.

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Quantum computing… for real?

Last year, we talked about quantum computing—and 2024’s flurry of announcements suggests it’s truly picking up steam. Perhaps quicker than anticipated.

Several companies showcased prototype systems surpassing the 200-qubit mark, with more robust error-correction protocols that push the boundaries of “quantum supremacy” into practical territory. There’s also been rapid progress in making quantum hardware more modular, allowing different components to be linked like puzzle pieces—a crucial step in building larger, more stable quantum machines. Adding to the excitement, Google unveiled Willow, a new chip architecture that embraces advanced error correction and gate-based logic, signaling a leap forward in commercial readiness.

In 2025, the conversation is shifting from isolated lab experiments to real-world integration. We’re seeing startups introduce streamlined software stacks for quantum programming, while major cloud providers are partnering with hardware firms to offer “quantum-as-a-service” platforms. Though challenges like qubit stability and scalability remain, the momentum is undeniable: 2025 isn’t just about proof-of-concept anymore—it’s about finding commercial value in fields such as cryptography, drug discovery, and logistics. If 2024 was the year quantum broke through its own hype, 2025 aims to give it a solidified place in the future of computing.

A word from our partners

AI co-pilots, part 2

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Unicorner Wrapped

In case you missed it in our last email of the year, here are some stats we’d like to share with you from 2024:

All of this has been an amazing journey—we’ve loved connecting with more of you around the world, and feel especially blessed to be able to bring so many people together.

Concluding thoughts

In 2025, we’ll continue to focus on our mission of highlighting the next Unicorn startups and bringing anyone or any company in the startup space together. Know an interesting startup that should be on Unicorner, your own or otherwise? Reply to this email.

Expect to see us run an event every month in the Los Angeles and/or San Francisco areas. Small dinners, thought-leader firesides, parties, and much more to come.

We’re excited for this coming year. No matter when you joined us on this journey, we thank you for your continued support, and wish you a happy and prosperous 2025! 🚀

This is Arek and Ethan, signing on for a wonderful year ahead. 🫡

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