For a long time, the path to scaling a startup seemed relatively straightforward: a large market, access to capital and good technology were enough to support the ambition of going global. Today, this potential remains, but in a different context. As the ecosystem matured, disputes over technology, infrastructure, data circulation and the origin of capital began to have a concrete impact on investment decisions, strategy and the growth of technology companies, requiring more sophisticated readings of the international scenario.
According to Marcio Sette Fortes, economist and professor of International Relations at Ibmec-RJ, geopolitics moved from a peripheral role to the center of economic and business decisions, in addition to the analysis of risks and opportunities. “Geopolitics is no longer an ancillary area and is now fundamental in organizations’ decisions. It is necessary to cross-reference data, evaluate trends and, based on this, estimate future scenarios for the market”, he states.
In the professor’s assessment, this movement reflects an international context marked by greater instability and less predictability. Trade disputes, diplomatic tensions and regulatory changes began to directly interfere with the risk calculation made by companies and investors, affecting everything from the cost of capital to access to markets.
In this environment, startups – especially those with international ambitions – begin to be impacted by factors that go beyond the product or business model. Trade, diplomatic and regulatory disputes affect the cost of capital, predictability and access to markets, imposing new barriers to the growth of technology companies.
Data from the World Economic Forum reinforce this diagnosis. Geoeconomic confrontation appears as the main global risk for 2026, ahead of conflicts between States, extreme weather events, social polarization and disinformation. In the report “The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026”, half of those interviewed predict a turbulent world in the next two years, while 40% expect, at least, an unstable scenario. Only 9% bet on stability and 1% on calm.
When economics and geopolitics meet
In the assessment of Marcelo Nakagawa, professor of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship and Digital Business at Insper, the geopolitical context adds to a structural change in the global economic environment.
According to him, the first shock felt by startups was not political, but economic. “There was a time when the cost was very low in several countries. As we approached the pandemic, there was an increase in inflation in the United States, Brazil and other regions, and the interest rates in the main economies started to rise”, he states.
“As a result, money that was previously very cheap and circulated more freely began to become isolated”, says Marcelo. For startups, this represented an especially difficult time to raise funds, faced with more cautious and selective investors, just when the global scenario was already starting to become more uncertain.
The financial squeeze coincided with geopolitical tensions that had been building for decades. “We are talking about the last 25 to 30 years in relation to China’s emergence. This was already attracting attention, including during the Biden administration, but what we are seeing now is a greater intensification, largely due to the second Trump administration”, he states.
For the teacher, this context means that decisions that were previously essentially technical now have strategic implications. In the field of innovation, this manifests itself concretely in access to resources and inputs. According to the expert, the dispute over land and critical minerals – essential for the production of batteries, semiconductors and chips – creates new zones of influence and increases tensions between countries.
Marcelo also highlights that digital innovation today depends on production chains and infrastructures that are highly sensitive from a geopolitical point of view, such as semiconductors, cloud, data centers and artificial intelligence. Any disruption in these links could compromise the ability of technology companies to scale globally, making their expansion more complex and less predictable.
The centrality of the United States
From the investors’ point of view, geopolitics has become more explicitly part of risk analysis. Alvaro Filpo, founding partner of Fabrica Ventures – a fund based in Palo Alto, with Brazilian investors and an exclusive focus on late stage startups – states that this change did not occur in the abstract, but through concrete capital movements.
According to him, by 2023, around 50% to 55% of global investments in venture capital took place in the North American market. In recent years, this movement has intensified, driven above all by the concentration of contributions to artificial intelligence. “AI is extremely capital intensive, both in the development of models and in infrastructure, such as data centers and semiconductors. This is money that is coming and staying in the United States,” says Alvaro.
He notes that geopolitics manifests itself especially clearly in the retraction of international investment in China. “There were North American funds and institutional capital from different parts of the world allocated to China, but that ended. That money dried up”, he points out. According to Alvaro, greater state interference and institutional insecurity have increased the perception of risk, driving investors away from a market that, for years, has consolidated itself as the second largest globally in venture capital investments, behind only the United States.
This double movement – capital retraction in certain markets and concentration in specific sectors and geographies – reinforces the centrality of the North American market in the global innovation ecosystem. “All the big AI companies are in the United States,” says Álvaro, citing companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as data center infrastructure companies.
For startups, especially those operating with cutting-edge technologies, this scenario makes strategic decisions even more sensitive. Where to operate, where to concentrate infrastructure and how to access capital depend not only on the business model, but also on the geopolitical context in which the company is located.
Despite the advancement of data sovereignty agendas, digital regulation and disputes over technology, the experts interviewed by Startups do not see the end of global innovation. What changes, according to them, is the degree of predictability and neutrality of the environment.
For founders and investors, monitoring political, regulatory and economic indicators has become as relevant as analyzing traditional market metrics. In 2026, innovation remains global, but increasingly conditioned by the geopolitical context in which it is inserted.
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