Investors often ask: what comes after SaaS? Where are the next outsized returns hiding?

For Bill Tai, early backer of Canva, Zoom, and SafetyCulture, it comes down to finding the wave, not chasing the wake.

"The biggest companies come from timing," he told Startmate. "You don’t need to be smarter than the world. You just need to be in the right market at the right moment."

Here’s where Bill believes the next $10B opportunities are forming and why they demand attention from angel and sophisticated investors alike.
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1. AI infrastructure: the internet rebuild, round two

We’re not just in an AI boom. We’re in a total reshaping of compute infrastructure, the kind Bill compares to the rise of the internet from 1994 to 2002.

"Training GPT-3 cost tens of millions. GPT-4 cost hundreds. The next generation may cost billions," Bill said. That pressure is not linear, it’s explosive.

Training demands are driving exponential GPU consumption, surging data center load, and insatiable energy requirements.

For investors, this isn’t just about funding another ChatGPT clone. It’s about the second-order effects:

• Data center capacity expansion
• AI-native semiconductors and interconnects
• Power-hungry cooling and storage infrastructure
• Energy generation and edge compute

This wave mirrors the early internet infrastructure era, with higher capital intensity and bigger winners.

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2. Energy: renewables at the inflection point

There’s a structural shift underway in power generation. The cost of producing solar, hydro, wind and even nuclear has fallen below the marginal cost of fossil fuels.

"Around 2018, renewables hit economic parity," Bill notes. "But grids weren’t built for bidirectional energy flow."

The grid’s evolution mirrors the telecom shift from circuit-switched to packet-switched networks. It’s no longer about centralised production—it’s about flexibility, intermittency, and storage.

Bill believes:

• Grids will need semantic control layers to handle multi-source input and volatile demand.
• Distributed generation (solar, batteries, vehicles) will drive edge computing for energy.
• Software will be the difference between energy abundance and chaos.

For investors, this is a 10-to-20-year secular play. Think beyond climate tech buzzwords. Think grid remodelling as the next trillion-dollar category.

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3. Creator economies: the new social operating system

The creator economy isn’t a niche. It’s the next consumer internet platform shift.

"OnlyFans generates $7B in revenue and $6B in free cash flow," Bill points out. "That’s $30M revenue per employee."

While Meta, TikTok, and YouTube dominate attention, they don’t serve creators as primary customers. That opens a wedge for new platforms, tools that blend:

• Live community + monetisation
• AI agents + real-time polling or moderation
• Native creator analytics

Bill’s latest project, Gigaverse, is targeting this opportunity, bringing Zoom-quality infrastructure and Discord-like UX to creator communities. Think livestreaming for monetisation, not just engagement.

The lesson for investors? Look where the power is shifting. It’s moving from platform to talent. From audience to ownership. That reallocation is an investable trend.

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4. Healthcare x data: semantic AI in the enterprise stack

US healthcare is 18% of GDP, and largely broken.

That’s the thesis behind another Bill-backed venture: Dyad, a semantic AI layer that standardises healthcare data across providers.

"They’re building the semantic index for medicine. Like Google did for information," he said.

The opportunity: Most healthcare systems use ancient ERP-style databases. Dyad is partnering with AWS and Infor to modernise data access, privacy, and interoperability.

For investors, the angle is clear: high-trust vertical AI with a real business case. This isn’t AI for AI’s sake, it’s fixing one of the most expensive and inefficient systems in the world.

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5. How to invest ahead of the curve

Bill’s biggest wins weren’t obvious bets. They were category-defining companies born at the right moment. His advice:

• Surf the market, not the hype. The best signals aren’t on TechCrunch - they’re in macro data, infra bottlenecks, and generational behaviour shifts.
• Back the architecture. Whether it’s internet in the 90s or AI compute today, the rails get built before the gold rush.
• Be thesis-driven, not trend-chasing. By the time everyone agrees it’s a good idea, the returns are gone.

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Final thought: energy and Ddata are the new distribution

Just as software once ate the world, infrastructure is now rebuilding it.

The next decade will be shaped by:

• How efficiently we compute
• How intelligently we generate and route power
• How equitably we help creators and workers own their value

Bill Tai isn’t just betting on founders. He’s betting on foundational rewrites. And for investors willing to zoom out, that’s where the real alpha lives.

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Watch our full interview with Bill Tai here.

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This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial product advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Angel investing carries risk, and you should seek independent financial or legal advice before making investment decisions.