The venture capital playbook is being rewritten by agentic AI. Speaking at Web Summit, Larry Li, Founder and Managing Partner at Amino Capital and Forbes Midas List honoree, outlined how agentic AI is fundamentally transforming both startup formation and VC investment strategies.
The solo founder renaissance
Traditional VC wisdom held that diverse founding teams with complementary technical skills and international expertise were essential.
The introduction of AI has turned that on its head. Li now sees opportunities in startups led by single founders and recent graduates without technical backgrounds, a shift that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
The reason? Agentic AI has become the co-founder who never argues, never quits, and instantly fills capability gaps.
“Six-year-olds can now build apps,” Li observed, highlighting the democratisation of software development through AI coding tools. This isn’t hyperbole, it’s the reality of “vibe coding,” where natural language replaces traditional programming barriers.
Li believes software itself will become worthless. Li emphasised that creativity is now more important than ever. When MVPs no longer require software builders and enterprise productivity gains can reach 80% (though employees cautiously claim only 30%, fearing redundancy, according to Li), the competitive moat shifts entirely to creativity and problem identification.
Looking at the wider AI investment landscape, Li highlighted his interest in teams using AI to solve specific pain points for underserved customers.
Large language models have become utilities, and the chatbots and APIs that provide access to them have become commoditised tools competing on cost. The value lies not in the technology itself but in data, context, and understanding user behaviour. Li cited Meta’s algorithms, which know users better than their own mothers, demonstrating how contextual intelligence creates sustainable advantage.
VCs must deploy their own agents
This democratisation creates a paradox for venture capitalists. When millions can become entrepreneurs overnight, how do VCs identify winners? Li’s answer: build AI agents for deal sourcing and evaluation.
With accelerators like Y Combinator producing 600 companies annually, human-only analysis is impossible. To tackle this, Amino Capital has developed AI-driven scoring systems that analyse founder relationships, employment history, and cultural backgrounds. Li said startups with an international background and a deeper understanding of the world tend to produce better results. This is a key parameter accessed by Amino’s AI agents.
The winning strategy
For founders, Li’s advice is surgical: go narrow and deep. Solve specific problems that large companies won’t touch. Serve customers nobody else wants—the SMEs, immigrants, and underbanked populations that established players ignore. He pointed to Chime Financial, which built a unicorn serving low-income customers and new immigrants without credit history.
The AI age hasn’t eliminated challenges for founders, but it has redistributed them. Technical execution is solved. Now success belongs to those who identify the right problems and serve overlooked markets with relentless focus. For VCs, the challenge is equally clear: deploy agentic AI or risk missing the next generation of breakout companies.