Refining Our “Boringtech” Thesis: Themes and Pillars of 2025 and 2026

As we continue investing, we like to demystify our boringtech view as the industry unfolds. Boringtech is not about dull companies. It’s about the “behind-the-scenes” and mission-critical technologies that have practical applications and solve unglamorous problems for businesses. They have stable demand because they support essential business functions rather than fleeting consumer trends. Boringtech is reliable and focused on making other companies (and the world) work better. These business models prioritize durability, recurring revenue, and low churn over viral growth or hype.

Everyday Examples of Boringtech:

  • Enterprise software: Salesforce, Microsoft, Hubspot, Oracle, SAP

  • Cloud data platforms: Snowflake, Databricks

  • Blockchain infrastructure: Fireblocks, Anchorage, BitGo, Dfns

  • Cloud computing platforms: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud

  • Core banking technology: Thought Machine, Temenos, Mambu, Finastra, Fidelity National Information Services

What “Boringtech” Means for Our Fund

For us, Boringtech is the layer that makes sexy technology usable in mission‑critical contexts. These products may appear mundane from the outside, but they address (often) complex regulatory, security, and operational issues that most teams would rather buy than build.​ Our two primary Boringtech focus areas are 1) artificial intelligence (AI) and 2) blockchain.

AI applications in "boringtech" – back-office and operational tasks like compliance, reconciliation, and reporting – automate repetitive processes, interpret regulations, and predict risks to cut manual effort while ensuring audit readiness. Examples of these include:

  • Back-office reconciliation and reporting: AI automates matching of transactions across disparate systems, reducing manual effort and improving accuracy for audit-ready reporting

  • Compliance and regulatory monitoring, and AI ethics: AI monitors evolving regulations, maps changes to internal policies, and provides real-time alerts to ensure ongoing adherence and reduce compliance risk

  • Procurement and contract management: AI extracts key terms and risks from contracts while optimizing vendor management and spend through predictive analytics

  • Audit and controls testing: AI continuously analyzes large datasets to identify anomalies and test compliance controls, enhancing audit efficiency and risk detection

  • Robotics training and QA systems: using AI to train robots to work more effectively in industrial use cases.

Our portfolio company Nexxa embodies Boringtech by leveraging agentic AI to automate repetitive, complex workflows in heavy industries like energy, construction, railroads, and mining, where engineers rely on fragmented legacy systems and manual processes.

On the blockchain front, our focus is on the infrastructure, software, and networks that enable blockchains to operate as dependable and trusted financial systems. Examples include:

  • B2B neobanks that simplify stablecoin payment flows for businesses by abstracting blockchain complexity and integrating reconciliation, regulatory reporting, and on/off‑ramping

  • Payments APIs that serve as the connection between enterprise systems and the blockchain, enabling businesses to send/receive stablecoins or cryptocurrencies without intermediaries that exist in the traditional payment ecosystem

  • FX and settlement layers that leverage stablecoins to reduce cross-border transaction costs and settlement times

Why This Version of Boringtech Now?

AI and blockchain have evolved from experimental technologies to widely-adopted and scalable systems/platforms that consumers and companies increasingly rely on. This progress has highlighted a gap between what is possible from a technical and operational standpoint, and what is legally permissible. For instance, although anyone can technically create AI-generated images of others, legal and ethical constraints limit such uses. Boringtech plays a crucial role in bridging this gap by embedding compliance and regulatory oversight into new business models.

Our updated thesis is simple: in every hype cycle, the durable value ends up in the infrastructure that nobody tweets about. In AI and blockchain, we plan to keep backing those invisible, unsexy layers that make transformative technologies safe, reliable, and indispensable.

Know a Boringtech company? Send them our way!

Brian Wongboringtech