Deal Flow Pulse: September 2026

September was a month of high volume and deliberate filtering. Across both our direct investment activity and our mandate and advisory work, the conversations ranged from pre-seed pitches at the idea stage through to large-scale secondary positioning for companies approaching public markets. The common thread was complexity: most of the interesting work this month required sitting with ambiguity for longer than a single call.

Direct Investment

On the balance sheet side, we reviewed a meaningful number of inbound pitches across our core sectors. The most technically substantive conversations came from founders building infrastructure, companies solving hardware interoperability problems for AI compute, AI-native platforms for credit markets where traditional scoring models do not apply, and early-stage biotech working on diagnostics that complement rather than replace existing clinical pathways.

Not all of these were fits. We look for:

• Founders with genuine operational exposure to the problem they are solving

• Business models where the infrastructure layer creates a defensible position over time

• Rounds where a co-investor or lead is already setting the terms and we can follow with conviction

• Sectors within our thesis: fintech and financial infrastructure, workforce technology, telecoms, sports technology, deep tech, and wellbeing

Several conversations were clear passes on sector grounds. We do not invest in real estate, climate tech, or consumer hardware, and we said so quickly.

Mandate and Advisory

The advisory side of September was dominated by pre-IPO secondary deal flow and the infrastructure work that surrounds it: compliance review, investor screening, fee negotiation, and NDA coordination. This is not glamorous work but it is consequential. Getting the structure right on a secondary transaction matters as much as sourcing the allocation.

We also ran introductions for founders in earlier stages where the mandate model made more sense than a direct investment. The sectors where we made active introductions this month included:

• Fintech infrastructure and lending platforms

• AI automation for regulated industries

• Deep tech with mixed grant and equity funding strategies

• Diagnostics and health technology at the pre-CE mark stage

In each case, the founder had a clear funding need but needed access to a specific investor network rather than general market exposure. That is the mandate brief we take on.

Where We Said No

A meaningful portion of September's conversations were polite passes. Co-living real estate, AI upskilling consultancy, and several sector mismatches arrived as inbound pitches. We try to give clear feedback quickly. A conversation that ends in a clear no is still a useful conversation if the founder leaves knowing exactly why.

We also walked away from one secondary deal that looked attractive on headline valuation but did not hold together on structure. Fee stacking across multiple intermediary layers is a consistent red flag in pre-IPO secondaries and one we take seriously.

What We Are Watching

A few themes from September's deal flow are shaping our lens going into Q4. The gap between AI in prototype and AI in production is becoming a meaningful filter: we are more interested in founders who have built for regulated, real-world deployment than those optimising benchmark performance. The MVNO and business telecoms market is bifurcating in ways that create genuine SMB opportunities. And institutional appetite for structured pre-IPO access in fintech remains high, with the quality of the access route being the decisive variable.

Plantec invests directly from our balance sheet at pre-seed to Series A, and we run mandated fundraises for founders seeking seed to Series B capital. If you are building in our sectors and heading into a raise, we are open to a conversation. Reach out through plantec.io.