The eighteen sectors
An index only means something if a sector means the same thing in January as it does in December. So this list is frozen and it is not ours: it is Dealroom simplified sector taxonomy (18 sectors), adopted verbatim and captured on 2026-07-21. Nobody here — and no model — is allowed to invent a nineteenth category; a round that fits none of these is left out rather than filed somewhere convenient.
The sectors are mutually exclusive: every company gets exactly one. That is what an index needs — if a company could carry three sectors the shares would add up to 300% and “which sector is hottest” would stop meaning anything. The cost is that AI, which is now a layer under everything, would swallow the fintechs and the health companies if we let it. So AI is reserved for companies whose product is the model or the infrastructure around it, and everything else that leans on AI is filed under its own industry and tagged AI-nativeinstead. That way we can say “AI took a third of this month's deals” without breaking the arithmetic.
- 01
AI
The model or the AI capability IS the product — foundation models, inference infrastructure, AI developer tooling, AI research labs. If AI is instead applied to a specific industry's problem, classify it under that industry and set isAiNative instead.
- 02
Fintech
Moving, storing, lending, insuring or investing money — payments, banking, insurance, wealth, credit, crypto and financial infrastructure.
- 03
Other B2B Software
Software sold to businesses that does not fit a more specific sector here. The deliberate catch-all for horizontal SaaS — use it only after checking the specific sectors first.
- 04
Consumer Services
Sold directly to individuals for their own life — travel, dating, fitness, media, gaming, consumer apps and consumer hardware. Not shopping itself, which is eCommerce & Marketplaces.
- 05
Biotech & Life Sciences
Drug discovery, therapeutics, genomics, synthetic biology, lab tooling and agritech biology. Discovering or engineering biology, as distinct from delivering care.
- 06
eCommerce & Marketplaces
The transaction is the product — online retail, D2C brands, and two-sided marketplaces matching buyers with sellers.
- 07
Energy
Generation, storage, grid, fuels, carbon and the wider climate/materials transition, including circular-economy and sustainable-materials companies.
- 08
Transportation
Moving people or goods on the ground or water — EVs, autonomous driving, logistics, rail, shipping, micromobility. Aircraft go to Aviation; anything leaving the atmosphere goes to Space.
- 09
Health Tech & Medtech
Delivering or managing care — clinical software, diagnostics, medical devices, digital health, care delivery and health insurance operations.
- 10
Cybersecurity
Defending systems, networks, identities and data — including cryptography and privacy infrastructure.
- 11
Space
Beyond the atmosphere — launch, satellites, in-orbit services, earth observation, space infrastructure.
- 12
Food
Growing, producing, distributing or serving food and drink — including agtech operations, alternative protein and restaurant technology.
- 13
Semiconductors
Chip design, fabrication, packaging, photonics, quantum hardware and the equipment that makes them.
- 14
Edtech
Learning, teaching, training, credentialing and the software schools and universities run on.
- 15
Defence
Built for military, defence or national-security customers, including dual-use companies that lead with that market.
- 16
Robotics
Machines acting in the physical world — humanoids, industrial and warehouse robots, drones, embodied AI. The robot is the product, even though it is full of AI.
- 17
Marketing
Reaching, measuring and converting an audience — adtech, martech, CRM, commerce media and creator tooling.
- 18
Aviation
Aircraft and the systems around them — airframes, propulsion, eVTOL, avionics, airports and air traffic.
Changing this list is a versioned event
Adding, renaming or removing a sector silently rewrites history — last quarter's “Robotics share” would no longer mean what it meant when it was published. So the set is versioned, every stored round carries the version it was classified under, and a comparison that crosses a version boundary has to be declared rather than quietly drawn. This page currently describes v1.