Global Political Consensus - A Future that Includes AI & Digital Finance
GLOBAL POLITICAL CONSENSUS - A FUTURE THAT INCLUDES AI & DIGITAL FINANCE
We recently recorded updated investment thesis webinars for each of our AI Access and Blockchain Coinvestors investment strategies. We encourage you to listen to them at your leisure.
In each case we paint a picture of an inevitable future characterized by a global digital economy and a world in which all of our activities are either digital or supported by advanced computing capabilities.
This is a story you have heard from us for more than a decade, and one that we have worked on, in some cases, for more than forty years. We believe that this transition is inevitable and that it represents a powerful tailwind that will drive value creation for those companies and investors who back the most promising innovators and their startups. Which is our own investment focus.
In this week's newsletter, we share the views of the world's most important political leaders as they update their industrial policy here in the last part of 2025.
AN EMERGING GLOBAL CONSENSUS
While they may have taken a while to get here, today there is an almost universally held political consensus that AI and Digital Finance must be incorporated into every countries' national industrial policy.
It is not too far from the truth to say that today, in the fourth quarter of 2025, almost every major economy has updated their Industry and Economic policy to include a heightened focus on AI and Digital Finance and in many cases, these areas are now in the top three priorities being made the focus on investment and economic support.
As often is the case, when countries want to encourage innovation, they tend to put enormous capital into late stage and public company initiatives, creating the risk of irrational exuberance and elevated prices which in prior decades have led to short term corrections. There is also still a great deal of confusion in the minds of political leaders about what Digital Finance is, whether or not it will run on distributed ledger rails, and how much of it can be centrally controlled by each nation's Central Bank, versus what can be left to the private markets. We hold the view that innovation is not driven by governments, or by large legacy enterprises, but rather by the next generation of innovators and the disruptive companies that they found and lead, and for the most part they have already decided the answer to this question. For reasons we won't go into today, AI and Digital Finance are fundamentally linked, and most leading edge computer scientists are already writing their code incorporating the two together.
Without further ado, let's share the evidence for AI first.
AI POLITICAL CONSENSUS
What follows are recent quotes from the leaders of most of the world's leading economies and populations.
Table 1 — AI & Advanced Computing (quotes from 2024–2025)
This is a dramatic shift from a few years ago, when this simply was not a topic that national leaders felt the need to have a point of view on.
DIGITAL FINANCE POLITICAL CONSENSUS
While there remains more confusion about what Digital Finance is, and what it implies for the monies, commodities and securities that will digitalized, and the new global financial system that has to be stood up to enable them, most countries are now marching forward into this future together.
Table 2 — Blockchain, Digital Finance & Digital Assets (quotes from 2024–2025)
A remarkable shift in a handful of months - remember just last year in 2024 when many of these same leaders were attempting to tell the tide not to come in as King Canute did centuries before them.
IMPLICATIONS FOR INVESTORS
So what does this mean for investors, and why are we using up an entire newsletter to explore this emerging political consensus?
Well there are many reasons to do so:
National industrial strategy and policy shapes how legislation and rulemaking priorities are set and we can already see a dramatic shift in favor of accelerating AI and Digital Finance innovation in almost every nation.
Political leaders control capital and non-capital systems that can greatly accelerate investment, capital formation, startup activity, and the support of innovation ecosystems In most countries the drums are now pounding in favor of the innovators we are backing.
While we mentioned up front that excessive focus on public and late stage companies can create boom and bust cycles, the effect is still beneficial to early stage innovation which may take years to get media attention, but which is multiplying by orders of magnitude in this timeframe.
While innovators tend not to worry too much about what politicians say if it is positive, outright negative opposition is hard to ignore - in this timeframe, most of the outright resistance has gone, or at least is temporarily unable to win the argument.
And so on.
In short, our view is that the environment has become much more positive for early stage innovation and investment in AI and Digital Finance, and we are working hard to deploy most capital now.
If you’re interested in learning more or expressing your interest in our AI Access and Blockchain Coinvestors investment strategies, please reach out to IR@FifthEra.com.
We look forward to talking to you about our investment perspectives and activities.
The Fifth Era Partner Team
About Fifth Era
We are entering a period of unprecedented innovation we call the Fifth Era, and every industry and business will be dramatically impacted. We focus on investing into these new innovations. Fifth Era specializes in investment strategies which construct portfolios of hard-to-access funds and direct investments through our investment strategies - AI Access and Blockchain Coinvestors. Fifth Era's investment strategies are now in their 12th year and to date we have invested in a combined portfolio of 1,500+ companies and projects including 80+ unicorns. In the US we are a SEC registered investment advisor, in the UK a FCA appointed representative and our funds are registered in Switzerland. Visit us at www.FifthEra.com to learn more.
SEC Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training.
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