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Наталя ХандусенкоAI Eng
16 June 2026, 11:09
2026-06-16
The founder of the investment company TA Ventures told which AI businesses are currently most interesting to investors
The most promising direction for creating an AI business now is vertical AI in regulated industries: medicine, finance, DefenceTech, energy, etc. Due to local characteristics, their own leaders will appear in different regions, which will allow scaling one logic to dozens of markets and building billion-dollar companies. Victoria Tigipko, the founder of the investment company TA Ventures, who has 17 years of experience investing in startups, is convinced of this.
The most promising direction for creating an AI business now is vertical AI in regulated industries: medicine, finance, DefenceTech, energy, etc. Due to local characteristics, their own leaders will appear in different regions, which will allow scaling one logic to dozens of markets and building billion-dollar companies. Victoria Tigipko, the founder of the investment company TA Ventures, who has 17 years of experience investing in startups, is convinced of this.
A promising direction for investors now is vertical AI in regulated industries. A striking example is the legaltech sphere, where general models are still often "hallucinating", which opens up a huge space for the creation of specialized software. Similar processes are taking place in healthcare, finance, energy and DefenceTech.
"Our portfolio includes Qanooni, a strong Arab legal AI. They don't let external players in. That's why we're taking the US model and looking for local analogues in closed geographies, because different regions will have their own leaders due to language barriers, regulation, data security, and local features. This creates an opportunity to build dozens of local leaders based on the same logic, which can become billion-dollar companies," Victoria Tigipko said in an interview with Forbes Ukraine.
According to the founder of TA Ventures, it is strategically beneficial to implement AI in narrow industries — for example, in cosmetology clinics that dream of scaling sales but do not have the resources for their own IT teams.
Another powerful trend is the insurance sector, where companies are building new AI-driven systems from scratch. In the US, this is one of the fastest growing verticals.
"This is just beginning in Europe, and that is why there is a window of opportunity now. In healthcare, doctors spend up to 70% of their time on administrative work. AI can completely eliminate this. There are companies that are building AI for nutritionists, rehabilitation specialists, dentists, and speech therapists. These are tens of thousands of clients," explains Tigipko.
Opportunities for Ukrainian startups
Although the Ukrainian and European local markets are smaller than the American one, they also open up serious prospects. Although it is more difficult to create a unicorn company here, building a business worth $30–100 million is also a great result, the investor believes.
A separate big trend today is everything related to sensors: from AI analytics of sensors to their integration into industrial production, the agricultural sector, and modern greenhouses.
"Our portfolio includes Elemental Machines, a developer of a platform for intelligent monitoring of laboratories, scientific research, and production. The company solves a banal problem in the pharmaceutical industry: a huge number of vaccines became unusable due to faulty sensors in refrigerators," Tigipko noted.
One of the key areas of development is AI for DefenceTech, covering intelligence, autonomous drones, navigation, target acquisition and energy security. Each of these verticals will inevitably have its own specialized AI layer.
“Instability creates new opportunities. For Ukraine, this is a chance to become the “Silicon Valley” of DefenceTech,” emphasizes Victoria Tigipko. “Another big direction is AI for real estate. Now the market has subsided, but after the war there will be a boom, and this vertical will grow dramatically. There are about 150 key robot manufacturers in the world, and this creates space for a local industry, which will definitely be needed, because there is a need for repair, service, and engineering.”
“When investors saw the quality of the companies, they said it was time to expand this initiative.” Norwegian fund ready to invest 100 million euros in Ukrainian deftech startups
