Investing in User-Owned Technology: 26 Opportunities in 2026

What

Electric Capital invests $1M to $20M in user-owned technology that gives people control, privacy, and access.

Since 2018, we have invested in systems that reduce reliance on intermediaries. We started with programmable money. Today, the same principles and technology apply across software, data, markets, and more.

These 26 opportunities in 2026 span user-owned systems, globally accessible markets, entertainment built on new financial primitives, and infrastructure for a world where AI builds software. But they all share a common thread: they explore how power, access, and ownership should work in a world where AI is ubiquitous and deeply embedded.

The opportunities are in six key areas:

• Personal Software: AI makes it possible to build tools tailored to your life, not just adapt to SaaS built for the average user. Private agents, encrypted collaboration, and locally-run software are now feasible and increasingly necessary.
• Agent-Focused Infrastructure: As AI agents become the primary builders of software, the development stack breaks. New primitives are needed for testing, deployment, payments, data access, and coordination between agents.
• Fintech & DeFi: Stablecoins give 4B+ people access to the dollar. Now, they want yield, equity exposure, insurance, and more. Demand for financial infrastructure that is global, programmable, and accessible is accelerating.
• Finance as Entertainment: Younger generations treat markets like entertainment. Trading is fast, social, and fun. This changes the shape of financial products and opens the door to new kinds of markets.
• Metaverse Revival: World models and generative AI collapse the cost of building immersive, personalized environments. People will step into experiences shaped around them rather than passively consume content. There are opportunities in building platforms that simplify world creation and give users control over how their data in these worlds are shared, stored, and monetized.
• New Crypto Primitives and Applications: Proof-of-stake and proof-of-work are maturing and leave room for new consensus models. Zero-knowledge systems and fully homomorphic encryption are becoming practical. These primitives unlock new design space: consensus tied to human or physical input, privacy-by-default infrastructure, and applications built on top for regulated entities, energy markets, and even new jurisdictions.

Why

The conditions for user-owned technology are here.

• There is a global collapse of trust in institutions. People have lost faith in institutions that were once core to economic, political, and social life: governments, banks, media, and schools. This is not a short-term trend or a response to any one event. This is a long-running shift in expectations. People no longer assume institutions are neutral, reliable, or aligned with their interests.
• Distributed systems and cryptography give builders new tools to operate without trust. These technologies are meant to operate in adversarial environments: they assume participants may be malicious, software must be verifiable, and systems should still function when counterparties fail.
• AI makes this shift toward trust-minimized systems more urgent and more possible than ever. AI not only centralizes power, but also lowers the cost to build. Now, one person can build in hours what once took teams months. This puts pressure on middlemen, opens new possibilities for builders, and increases demand for infrastructure that puts users in charge.
• User-owned systems defend freedom. User-owned systems minimize trust by shifting control back to the user. These systems cannot be unilaterally changed. They let people build without asking for permission. Done right, they allow users to opt out of systems that no longer serve them without loss in functionality.

How

If you're building in these areas, we want to invest in your ideas. Get in touch with us through info@electriccapital.com.

For deeper background on our thesis, read our 2018 papers on Reimagining Trusted Intermediaries and Programmable Money.