Executive Summary

Corporate innovation teams, venture capital firms, accelerators and government programs are increasingly tasked with sourcing high-quality dealflow from emerging markets but face high manual search costs, poor coverage outside major hubs, and abundant false positives. These 50,000 buyer organizations represent an addressable market of roughly $2.5B (at a $50K ACV), yet many organizations still rely on ad-hoc scouts or expensive travel to discover reliable opportunities. The product to build is an AI-curated discovery and matchmaking platform that ingests local signals, enriches entities using foundation-model embeddings and structured attributes, applies semantic vector search and compatibility scoring, and surfaces provenance-backed, ranked opportunities through APIs and CRM integrations. A human-in-the-loop curation layer, multilingual NLP, regulatory/risk flags, cohort benchmarking, and pilot-first pricing would be central features to ensure quality and accelerate adoption. This market is attractive now because corporate innovation budgets are shifting toward external scouting, investors and corporates are diversifying geographically, and advances in foundation models and vector search make large-scale entity enrichment practical and affordable. The venture’s strengths would be a clear $2.5B TAM, defensibility via labeled customer data and local scout partnerships, and differentiation through transparent provenance and quality controls; the main challenges are long enterprise sales cycles, uneven ground-level data quality across jurisdictions, and the need for ongoing investment in localization and regulatory expertise.

Market Opportunity

AI-curated discovery & matchmaking for emerging-market innovators targets a $2.5B = 50,000 organizations (corporate innovation teams, VCs, accelerators, government programs) × $50K ACV total addressable market with medium saturation and a year-over-year growth rate of 12% CAGR — increasing corporate innovation budgets and VC interest in geographic diversification (industry reports, corporate innovation surveys 2022-2024).

Key trends driving demand: Corporate innovation budgets are increasingly allocated to external scouting — creating steady demand for curated dealflow.; Investors and corporates are diversifying geographically, looking beyond major hubs to find high-growth opportunities in emerging markets.; Foundation models and vector search make large-scale entity enrichment and semantic discovery practical and affordable.; Local ecosystem builders and accelerators are professionalizing and willing to partner with data providers to amplify founders..

Key competitors include Crunchbase, Dealroom, AngelList / Wellfound.

Sign in to access

AI-curated discovery & matchmaking for emerging-market innovators

Executive Summary

Market Validation

Market Opportunity

More in B2B Software

Small-business grant discovery — centralized database + automated alerts

Streamline dealership ops — centralize inventory, leads, docs & payments

Early-traction trap: convert one-off signups into repeat video-contract users

Manual quoting & installs — AI visual quoting + field workflow automation

Outdated workflows: autonomous AI agents orchestrating ops & data (pain → AI OS)

Map processes first — prevent automating broken manual workflows