New Research Briefing: How AI Is Transforming Startup Scouting

ESCP’s Deeptech Entrepreneurship Research Briefings launch with a first issue dedicated to a fast-evolving question: How is Artificial Intelligence reshaping the way organisations identify and evaluate startups?

Drawing on 13 interviews with corporate innovation leaders, incubator managers, and venture capital professionals, this Research Briefing provides a grounded view of current practices and emerging models in AI-enabled startup scouting.

The findings reveal that startup scouting today remains highly fragmented and decentralised, with teams across business units and geographies operating with different methods, evaluation grids, and priorities. This lack of harmonisation makes it difficult to scale scouting or ensure consistent decision-making.

Despite the strong theoretical promise of AI, its actual adoption is still limited. Most organisations experiment at an individual level—using generative AI tools for desk research—while only a few advanced players, mainly VC firms, have developed proprietary, data-driven platforms integrating NLP and multi-source datasets. Adoption barriers include cultural resistance, low AI literacy, data quality issues, and the high cost of developing tailored solutions.

Across the interviews, one message stands out: human judgment remains central. AI can surface weak signals, expand search horizons, and process large volumes of information, but evaluating founders, strategic fit, and relational dynamics still relies on expert insight. The study points toward scalable hybrid models, where AI augments the early stages of scouting while humans retain responsibility for qualification and partnership decisions.

This first issue sets the foundation for a regular series exploring deeptech entrepreneurship and innovation practices across industries.