2025 Predictions from the Copec WIND Ventures Investment Team
In 2024, Latin America (LatAm) emerged as a bright spot in the global venture capital landscape, with VC funding reaching $884 million, a 14% increase both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. With its young population, growing middle class, and expanding access to digital technologies, the area presents tremendous opportunity. WIND Ventures continues to provide unparalleled access and market expansion into the region with new investments, including INERATEC, an e-Fuel company, and Optibus, a developer of end-to-end transportation management software.
As we begin 2025, we remain excited about the breakthroughs in mobility, energy, and retail and about the talented founders from around the world that we are equipping with the resources needed to expand into or accelerate growth in the LatAm market. Many of them garnered one of our inaugural TailWIND Awards in 2024. We remain bullish about the market and the trailblazers entering it in 2025. Here are a few of our predictions in our key focus for the year ahead.
2025 Predictions from the Copec WIND Ventures Team
Energy/Climate:
2025 will be the year that AI takes on Water Scarcity.
In 2025, rising water scarcity will push rapid innovation in sustainable solutions like desalination, wastewater recycling, and atmospheric water harvesting. Cities and industries will adopt these technologies, supported by AI-driven water management to reduce waste and optimize distribution. Governments and companies will heavily invest in water-efficient infrastructure, strengthening resilience in water-stressed areas.
Expect Venture Capital to Embrace the Marriage of AI and ClimateTech.
Climate tech and AI will remain the two biggest themes within venture capital. The two will become more entangled as one (growth in AI compute power) undermines the other (reducing CO2 emissions). The result, a new investment theme will emerge in typical color-coded venture style in 2025: ‘green AI’ vs ‘gray AI’ (akin to green vs gray hydrogen).
Crippling Supply Chain Challenges will Usher in a New Era of Grid-Edge Transformers.
Advanced grid-edge transformers will enable better visibility and control of our rapidly expanding. From 80k different types of distribution transformers today, modular, standardized and mass-manufactured solid state transformers will emerge to solve years-long, crippling supply chain challenges, while modernizing our creaking grids.
Peer-to-peer energy trading platforms will shortcut wholesale markets and provide hyper-localized AI-optimized matching of decentralized supply and demand.
While you might not speak to your neighbors, they could sell you their excess solar, maximizing returns for them, avoiding delivery costs for you and avoiding pressure on overloaded distribution infrastructure.
Global CO2 emissions will continue to increase in 2025.
The continued increase in global CO2 emissions will cause more tangible climate change destruction and create an ever more difficult challenge in reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
Retail:
GenAI will revolutionize the in-store retail customer service.
In-store customer service will become intertwined with AI, whether by headsets worn by associates that are connected to an AI help system or kiosks or robots that can converse directly with customers by voice to provide shopping assistance. Expect to see AI move from a purely virtual experience into the brick-and-mortar retail world.
GenAI will turbocharge small merchants in online marketplaces.
Small merchants selling to online marketplaces will break open one of the biggest barriers to their growth — developing compelling product listings. Next year, using Generative AI, sellers will be able to quickly and effortlessly generate superior written and image content for their product listings. This will transform online marketplaces and allow small merchants to compete better with larger sellers.
Amazon will launch AI-powered search.
Generative AI will continue to revolutionize online search through ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing. This will be especially true for one of the biggest Internet search engines — Amazon.com, which is the fifth highest-traffic website in the US and arguably the default search for eCommerce in the US. Next year, we expect Amazon to integrate GenAI into its search bar, allowing shoppers to visit Amazon not only for shopping but also for inspiration and answers for the day-to-day.
Mobility
Robo taxis will drive past early adoption.
2025 will be the year that we enter the age of “robo taxis” with 1) Waymo now well along its adoption S-curve in San Francisco and expanding quickly, and 2) Tesla favorably positioned with quickly maturing best-in-class autonomy technology and an existing large fleet to scale it.
Autonomous delivery will take off as self-driving vehicles and drones become common in last-mile logistics.
In 2025, urban areas will have fleets of robots on sidewalks, while drones will manage suburban and rural deliveries. Enhanced speed, cost-efficiency, and sustainability will redefine retail and e-commerce, with regulations supporting wider adoption and innovation.
Latin America:
Generative AI (GenAI) will proliferate in Latin America.
We expect the adoption of GenAI features to rapidly accelerate in Latin America and other major emerging markets in 2025. We’ve already started to see many startups and tech companies in consumer-facing industries in Latin America launching GenAI-powered features, such as in e-commerce, customer service, and fintech.
About WIND Ventures:
WIND Ventures is based in San Francisco and serves as the strategic venture capital arm of Copec, one of the leading energy, mobility, and retail companies in Central and South America. Copec is also one of the most valued brands throughout Latin America. WIND Ventures leverages Copec’s significant resources to accelerate growth, primarily within Latin America, for startups and scaleups across the world within the new mobility, energy, and retail sectors.
