Beyond The Chip Numbers
Chip demand and AI coding tools are real, and they’re growing. But they’re also the first place everyone looks, and rarely where the next leg of returns comes from. The pattern that keeps repeating is that the largest productivity gains surface first in the markets no one is watching, precisely because that’s where the most inefficiency is left to remove.
Physical retail is the clearest example. In-store sales still account for the large majority of US retail, yet the shelf has been almost impossible to instrument. A retailer can know everything about a website visitor and almost nothing about a product on a shelf three states away. Agentic AI is starting to close that gap, bringing the store floor the same kind of digitization that e-commerce infrastructure received a decade ago.
Voice AI As The New Interface
Anjli’s read on voice AI is direct: it is no longer a future concept, it is fast becoming the primary interface between people and intelligent systems. For a small business, a single missed call carries real revenue at risk, and AI receptionists are already closing that gap month over month.
The organizations that pair conversational AI with trust, enterprise integration, and real operational depth will be best positioned to lead the next generation of digital transformation. The same shift is fueling a rise in solo and small founding teams, who can now cover work that once required a full staff.
ElevenX Capital’s Perspective
At ElevenX Capital, we back companies solving real operational problems rather than chasing technology for its own sake. The markets that got skipped, the retail floor, the small business phone line, and the trades, were passed over because they were harder to reach and sell into, not because the opportunity was small. AI is finally becoming efficient enough to reach them.
Productivity follows inefficiency. That has always been highest in the markets software overlooked the first time it went looking for problems to solve. For investors willing to look past the obvious categories, that is where the next round of returns is most likely to be underpriced. That is where we’re looking.
