From fundraising campaigns to global capital infrastructure Industry leaders reveal their thoughts about a maturing market, the barriers holding it back and the decisions that could define its next decade.

Part 1 of the Future of Crowdfunding Initiative – Three round tables. Twelve industry leaders. Four continents. Two questions: what does the landscape look like now and what could crowdfunding become next?

Key findings

  1. Equity crowdfunding is consolidating in the US and much of Europe: fewer platforms and fewer deals, but more capital raised per deal – with real exceptions: Republic Europe reported deal volume up 22 per cent, and Australia described a sharp contraction in total funding.
  2. Crowdfunding is evolving from a campaign channel into private market infrastructure: a permanent layer of the private capital markets rather than a niche beside them.
  3. Investment crowdfunding has reached 2,230 cities across the United States, by Crowdfund Capital Advisors’ tracking, while venture capital concentrates in a handful of metropolitan hubs – evidence of a structurally different kind of capital.
  4. There is no single global formula for crowdfunding success: every market runs on its own mix of investor culture, regulation, incentives and community.
  5. A successful ecosystem must serve four constituents in balance – entrepreneurs, investors, platforms and regulators – or, in the panel’s words, the whole thing collapses.
  6. Regulation does not merely permit crowdfunding markets; it creates them – but regulators, panellists argued, are better at building protection than maintaining the plumbing.
  7. Liquidity is the industry’s defining gap: in the words of one participant, an investment without an exit is a donation – and tradability, actual trading activity and a profitable exit are not interchangeable.
  8. AI could alter the economics of crowdfunding before it alters the nature of an investment decision – compressing due diligence and giving small platforms the capability of large ones.
  9. Within years, investors may discover deals through AI agents rather than websites, making findability by agents a new strategic imperative – while a counter movement insists the final choice stays human.
  10. The tenfold-growth agenda is clear: mainstream adoption, investor success stories, portfolio building, exits and IPOs, cross-border campaigns, and policymakers who recognise crowdfunding as innovation infrastructure.

Executive summary

Crowdfunding is entering a new phase, but the world’s markets are not moving together. In the United States and much of Europe, consolidation tells the story of a maturing industry: fewer platforms running fewer but substantially larger deals, more sophisticated companies raising, and professional marketing behind nearly every campaign – though not uniformly, with Republic Europe reporting deal volume up 22 per cent and a participant from Australia describing a sharp contraction in total funding there. In emerging markets the challenge is different again: building the trust, regulation and entrepreneurial readiness on which investment crowdfunding depends. And the sectors attracting the most capital are not the consumer novelties of popular imagination: healthcare leads the US data and life sciences the EU’s – categories investors back because they offer genuine return potential.

The deeper shift is in what a platform is. The series’ most repeated phrase was “private market infrastructure”: crowdfunding moving from one-off campaign marketplaces towards a permanent layer of the private capital markets – integrated with venture capital, serving companies across their funding journey, and judged on what it offers beyond a single raise. A successful capital raise is not the same thing as a successful financing system: the first needs an attractive business and a capable campaign; the second needs repeatable economics, investor confidence, and a path beyond the initial subscription.

Why do some markets grow while others stall? Because crowdfunding is an ecosystem, not a product. The panels kept returning to a framework first developed alongside the World Bank: entrepreneurs, investors, platforms and regulators all have needs, and all four should be served in balance. Where regulators treat crowdfunding as part of a national innovation mission – as in the Baltic states – ecosystems thrive. Where frameworks go unmaintained, caps stand unrevised and secondary markets remain unbuilt, growth runs with one foot on the accelerator and one hand on the handbrake. And in emerging markets, Meseret Warner argued, the work starts earlier still: building founder readiness, investor trust and diaspora access at the same time as the rulebook – no model from mature markets imports cleanly.

AI could alter the economics of crowdfunding before it alters the nature of an investment decision. Panellists described it already compressing due diligence and deal preparation, with fraud detection, onboarding and tax analysis the gains next in view – and giving small platforms operational capability once reserved for the largest players. The more radical possibility is in how investors find deals at all: panellists across two continents described a future where people ask AI agents to find the right opportunity, making platforms and issuers that cannot be found by agents invisible. Yet the industry’s founding idea – investor sovereignty, the right to make your own choice – may prove its most durable asset, with a predicted counter movement of investors who insist the decision remains human. Delegation and sovereignty may well coexist.

The destination the series points to is a genuinely global market: a startup raising simultaneously in Europe, the US and Asia, validated by investor communities on three continents, with mutual recognition of compliance standards and a common definition of a digital public offer making it possible. These are proposals to test, not achievements secured – and testing them is the agenda GECA now carries into the next phase of its Future of Crowdfunding Initiative.

The defining question for the coming decade has evolved: no longer simply how does crowdfunding grow, but what must crowdfunding become in order to grow.

The state of the market: what the evidence shows

Is the crowdfunding market shrinking or consolidating?

Consolidating, in the US and much of Europe: fewer platforms and fewer deals, but more capital raised per deal.

Giancarlo Vergine , Founding Partner at Over Ventures , whose annual European Equity Community Capital Landscape report tracks the EU market, described the pattern directly: the number of platforms is reducing across Europe, with “less deals, but an increase of capital raised” – alongside growing integration with venture capital and the rise of specialised, vertical platforms.

“Venture capitalists are considering crowdfunding not as the last chance to raise money, but a means where retail investors can co-invest with the venture capital – and bring not only money and capital, but also loyalty, new ambassadors, the power of the community.” – Giancarlo Vergine, Founding Partner, Over Ventures

The United States tells a similar story for structural reasons. Chris Lustrino , Founder & CEO of market intelligence firm Kingscrowd , pointed to platform economics: running a $100,000 deal takes the same work as running a $5 million deal, so platforms now set high expectations of traction and marketing spend before a company lists. The result is a large reduction in companies raising, a large increase in average dollars raised, and a market where it is exceedingly rare to see a campaign succeed without professional marketing behind it. “If you build it, they will come, is not true,” he said. If you build it and bring your crowd with you, they will.

A market-wide pattern should not erase contrary evidence. Kieron O’Brien , Managing Director of Republic Europe, reported deal volume up 22 per cent year on year, spread across early and late-stage deals – and defended the small raise as the start of a relationship: “We’re not going to turn down the 500K, because the 500K today, when they come back to us the second or third time, is your 1 million and your 5 million.” Jill Storey, Non-Executive Director of the Crowdfunding Institute of Australia, described a smaller market that, by her account, peaked at about A86millionin2022andfelltoaboutA30 million by the 2025 financial year, with two earlier leading platforms entering administration – a reminder that platform economics and sustainability now deserve as much attention as investor protection. Maturation, experimentation and contraction coexist.

Is crowdfunding becoming private market infrastructure?

This seems to be the case – and it was the series’ most repeated idea. Issuers and large funds, Kieron O’Brien argued, increasingly want what a platform can offer beyond a one-off campaign: investor engagement, structured access to later-stage deals, and a relationship that lasts, because companies are staying private longer. Giancarlo Vergine described the same transition: crowdfunding moving from a funding channel to part of the private market infrastructure, with venture co-investment now spreading across Italy, France, Germany and Spain.

Which sectors attract the most crowdfunding investment?

Healthcare, not consumer products, leads the US market – and the reason could be attributed to return potential.

KingsCrowd’s first-half 2026 US data puts healthcare first by dollars raised, followed by media and entertainment, transport and aerospace, food and restaurants, and energy and natural resources. Its investor demand ratio – dollars invested against the supply of active offerings – was highest in transport and aerospace, energy, healthcare, and real estate and construction, which Chris Lustrino reads as comparatively strong demand for those opportunities. “Everyone just thinks this is Shark Tank businesses,” he said. “The largest dollar volumes are driven by really legitimate investors looking for a return.” These rankings are KingsCrowd’s US first-half data, not a global league table. A separate EU dataset points the same way: on ECSPR-regulated platforms, excluding the UK, Over Ventures’ research shows life sciences raising more than €60 million in the first half of 2026, over 30 per cent of the capital covered – though the two datasets differ in geographic and product coverage. Food and agriculture came second, and digital attracted the most investors, nearly 11,000. Life sciences is the capital-intensive sector; digital is the community-intensive one.

What makes a crowdfunding raise successful?

There was general consensus amongst the panellists that a strong community, a clear proposition and a credible growth story – together – hold the key. Kieron O’Brien’s “three Cs” frame it from the platform side: capital requirement, clarity of message, community. In those conditions, new categories are emerging fast – sports and fan communities, femtech, the creator economy – with average ticket sizes swinging four to five times between professional-investor sectors and everyday-retail ones. The growth story must hold up too: founders’ forecasts get ripped apart in VC meetings, and the more educated retail investor increasingly looks for the same credibility. And Jill Storey named the myth every young market unlearns:

“The platform does come with some crowd, but the organisation really needs its own crowd to be really successful.” – Jill Storey, Non-Executive Director, Crowdfunding Institute of Australia

Is there one global crowdfunding story?

No – and the differences are the lesson.

By Chris Lustrino’s observation, average raise sizes in Europe run nearly four times higher than in the US – a gap he attributes to infrastructure: the US has decades of angel groups and investment clubs competing for the same investors, while European investors hungry for private-market deal flow have nowhere else to go. UK investors arrive at platforms through powerful tax incentives that Australia lacks. Regulation and infrastructure, Kieron O’Brien observed, are converging faster than investor behaviour. And each major region holds one piece of the puzzle: the US has investor culture and education; the UK has made crowdfunding a mainstream part of the funding stack; Europe has built regulated trust; Asia leads on digital access and user experience. “If you join the best parts of all of them, you’ve got a tremendous private market ecosystem.” And, he added, “We’ve just got to join them all together quicker.”

That is, in one sentence, the case for a global alliance.

Why do some crowdfunding markets grow while others stall?

What makes a successful crowdfunding ecosystem?

One that serves four constituents in balance – and connects crowdfunding to the wider economy.

Sherwood (Woodie) Neiss , Principal at Crowdfund Capital Advisors and one of the architects of the US regulatory framework, set out the balanced stakeholder framework developed in his work on the law and with the World Bank: entrepreneurs need to raise efficiently without compliance crushing them; investors need real disclosures, sensible limits and education; platforms need operational freedom to survive; regulators need enforceable rules and the flexibility to adapt.

“It’s really four constituents that all need to be served, or the whole thing collapses. The four of them are the entrepreneurs, the investors, the platforms, and the regulators.” – Woodie Neiss, Principal, Crowdfund Capital Advisors

Bruce Davis , Chair of the UK Crowdfunding Association , added two tests of success: the market is doing a job in the economy – getting capital to the early-stage businesses the mainstream finance system has struggled to serve since the financial crisis – and it is integrated into the broader financial system rather than treated as a niche, so a business can grow with its investors rather than face an abrupt switch from a retail community to an institutional world. Karsten Wenzlaff , Secretary General of the Digital Invest Germany – German Crowdfunding Association , added a third, unfinished test: financial inclusion. Development institutions hoped equity crowdfunding would serve those with least access to capital, particularly female and young entrepreneurs; as markets mature, that promise is “something we still need to strive for”.

How big is the US crowdfunding market?

By Crowdfund Capital Advisors’ daily tracking, as Woodie Neiss described it in August 2026, some 9,200 companies have made more than 11,200 offerings under Regulation Crowdfunding, raising around $3 billion in ten years across 2,230 American cities – figures that, he noted, span debt and equity offerings. Venture capital, he contrasted, concentrates in four major metropolitan hubs. Women-owned founders account for 25.7 per cent of Reg CF offerings in that dataset. People invest in people from their own community – and, Woodie said, the regime has seen a single enforcement case in ten years. These are measures of participation and distribution rather than of investor returns, and the market remains small beside venture capital – but, as he put it, the signals are there.

Does regulation help or hold the market back?

Both – and the distinction is maintenance.

“I always look at regulation as something that doesn’t permit the market – it creates it,” Woodie Neiss said. “We didn’t have anything in the United States until Title III existed.” But the panel’s shared experience, across three continents, is that regulators, in Neiss’s words, are “really good at getting protection” and “not really good at maintaining the plumbing”: caps that stay too low, easy fixes that go unmade, and attention that drifts once the initial framework is built. Karsten Wenzlaff offered the sharpest illustration: when the European industry asked one national finance ministry to raise the ECSPR funding threshold from €5 million to €12 million, the answer noted that all existing funding rounds were below €5 million – data that cannot exist while the cap stands. As Bruce Davis observed, the rounds cluster at €4.9 million. “That tells you something.”

His broader diagnosis is that regulators see themselves as regulators within their jurisdictions – geographically and at the regulatory perimeter – without weighing how their decisions push activity into unregulated spaces, where, in the UK’s experience, he said, the harm has occurred. Risk aversion, he argued, is a no-win game: it doesn’t produce good markets, it produces unintended consequences. The UK’s relationship with its regulator remains, in his words, constructive for the most part – the tension is between regulatory objectives, not against safeguards themselves.

The positive model exists. In Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Karsten Wenzlaff reported, regulators support crowdfunding because they see it as part of a national fintech strategy: platforms get direct access to policymakers, and both sides work as part of the same mission. Meseret Warner , Founder & CEO of Ignite Capital PLC showed what pragmatic rule-making looks like in emerging markets: faced with shareholder-cap rules that crowdfunding inevitably breaks, Australia chose not to count crowd investors against the threshold, while Nigeria required them to be pooled into a single vehicle – two different mechanics, both preserving a clean cap table and the purpose of the model. Regulators get the principle, she observed; what they don’t always get right is the mechanics. In markets built from a donor-dominated funding culture, the whole ecosystem has to be built at once – regulators, investable founders, educated investors – and above all, success stories. “Success feeds success. If we can get things going, forget about 3 billion. If we can get a very small percentage of that, that will convince people” – more effectively, she argued, than education and awareness campaigns alone.

Why is liquidity the industry’s defining gap?

Because buying into a private company is far easier than selling out of one – and without exits, the model’s promise is incomplete.

“An investment that is just put into a company without an exit is a donation. And that’s not what this is.” – Woodie Neiss, Principal, Crowdfund Capital Advisors

In the US, Reg CF securities generally become transferable after a one-year resale restriction, subject to exceptions – but the end of that restriction does not itself create a market, and secondary trading runs into state-level securities law: fifty states, fifty rule sets – a mechanism Woodie argues will stay broken until these securities are treated as covered securities at federal level. The UK is building new venues such as PISCES, though it is not open to ordinary retail investors generally. And Woodie added the essential caveat: liquidity doesn’t matter unless the companies are doing well and there is demand for them on a secondary exchange. Tradability, actual trading activity and a profitable exit are not interchangeable – and all three matter to converting first-time believers into repeat investors.

Bruce Davis connected the gap to the macroeconomy: part of the reason there isn’t productivity growth is the absence of a well-functioning small-equity market. “If you want productivity growth, that’s what you need.” He also supplied the series’ most memorable corrective to the idea that any of this is new, when he spoke about the London Stock Exchange beginning as a coffee house full of people trading bits of paper (“it was basically crowdfunding”) and the Bank of England being founded with a peer-to-peer loan. Governments rediscover large-scale crowdfunding whenever they feel under threat; war bonds proved the model at national scale. Finance has a long history but a really short memory – and today’s industry is working with legislation that is 150 years old.

What will transform crowdfunding over the next decade?

How will AI change crowdfunding platforms?

AI could alter the economics of crowdfunding before it alters the investment decision itself.

Uli Fricke , CEO of FunderNation , set out the double edge: AI is a platform’s biggest opportunity and biggest threat at once – her small business faces hundreds of AI-enabled cyber attacks a day and defends itself with AI, operating on the assumption that any accessible data will be accessed. Jason Fishman , Co-Founder & CEO of Digital Niche Agency (DNA) , brought the marketer’s discipline: these are tools, outcomes depend on who is behind the wheel, and the rise of obvious machine-made content has made quality a differentiator. “Good AI usage? You should not be able to tell it was AI.” Konstantin Boyko , Co-Founder & CEO of LenderKit , compared the moment to the internet’s early growth, warning that adoption can run ahead of careful decisions about sensitive data and safe use.

Neera Patel , Head of Product at Ironstone , argued that the transformational shift is not AI alone but AI paired with verified, portable proof. AI is already collapsing the time due diligence and deal preparation take, with fraud detection, onboarding and cross-border tax analysis the gains next in view; make the resulting deal information tamper-proof and portable, and platforms can work with regulators, institutional funders and other platforms without endlessly repeating the same diligence. “The real value, I think, is not just about replacing that human judgment. It is AI helping small platforms actually deliver that operational capability and that evidence quality that historically only large platforms could afford.”

Will AI agents make investment decisions?

They could increasingly shape them – and the industry is split on where that ends.

Konstantin Boyko sketched the scenario the panel kept returning to: within years, people may not use websites the way they do now. They will talk to agents, and investing becomes “find me the right opportunity, knowing all the background about me, what I like”. The trust barrier is real but familiar – the same unease once attached to first online purchases – “and I think we will get there quite rapidly”. Uli Fricke commented: “It’s going to be very important for companies that raise money and for digital platforms to think about how can we be found by agents.” Karsten Wenzlaff extended it to regulation itself: today’s disclosure regime assumes a human downloads and reads a PDF; tomorrow’s disclosure may need to be AI-agent friendly as well as human friendly. These remain scenarios rather than forecasts – but they are scenarios the industry’s own builders consider near.

Governance arrives alongside. Neera Patel pointed to EU AI Act obligations, with deadlines around December 2027 for high-risk uses in financial services – which duties apply depends on the use case and its risk classification. AI-assisted decision-making will need sources, audit logs and traceability – “and right now everyone is just playing with AI”. Uli Fricke’s answer is architectural: deterministic AI systems, built with the help of large language models, for every question where trust and reliability are requirements. Karsten Wenzlaff located the real cost in uncertainty rather than over-regulation: deadlines without market standards, and regulators who contradict each other across borders. Taken together, the contributions point to a durable standard: AI is useful not when it produces an answer quickly, but when the organisation can substantiate its use of that answer.

And yet the series’ most resonant prediction ran the other way.

“Maybe there’s going to be a counter movement of investors who say: the reason why we go to these platforms is we are the ones who are making the investment choice at the end. It’s not a machine doing it. It’s not someone else doing it for us. It’s us.” – Karsten Wenzlaff, Secretary General, German Crowdfunding Association

Uli Fricke confirmed it from her platform’s data: investors come for the company, the technology, the mission first, the return second – and that enthusiasm will not go away. But those same enthusiasts already ask AI to pre-select companies that fit their scope. Jason Fishman sees the same at impact-investing events: beyond whatever advisers, human or AI, recommend, people want to back the company, play a role, be along for the ride. The panel offered no basis for declaring either model the winner – the likely future holds both: human heart, machine shortlist.

Is tokenisation finally crowdfunding’s breakthrough?

Not as an asset wrapper – possibly as trust infrastructure.

Konstantin Boyko was blunt: after years of promises, he still sees companies wanting “tokenisation for the sake of having tokenisation”. Uli Fricke called it a technology looking for a customer and a problem to solve, and challenged the liquidity claim directly: secondary trading liquidity only exists if other investors want to buy. Jason Fishman, speaking objectively rather than as a champion, confirmed there are pools of investors who transact in tokenised assets – often at larger average ticket sizes – but conceded the fundamental condition: “Demand has to be there.” And he endorsed the industry’s quiet rule: don’t lead with the word blockchain; investors won’t back what they don’t understand.

Neera Patel reframed the use case for the technology entirely: blockchain as an anchor for evidence. Store the data around a deal immutably – every verification, signature, waiver, version and date stamp – package the entire due diligence, and make it portable. Institutional investors receiving that package don’t have to repeat the diligence; they can assess the deal itself rather than the quality of the evidence in front of them – provided the underlying material stands up: a tamper-evident record proves provenance, not truth. In a trust-constrained industry, immutability may matter more than tradability. The test, in every case, is whether the technology removes a real obstacle.

What would bring institutional capital in – and should it come?

Larger rounds, portfolio mechanics and permissive rules – and the crowd’s primacy intact.

Uli Fricke set the entry conditions: institutions need large tickets – most cannot consider investments below the millions – and a regulatory environment that lets pension funds, insurers and banks hold what will always be perceived as a high-risk asset class. Trust, she argued, is the easiest of the three to fix. Jason Fishman quantified the prize: institutional validation, in his campaign experience, measurably lifts click-through and conversion rates, because in venture “everybody wants to be first to be second” – someone else has done the homework, and the crowd follows. Konstantin Boyko, true to the model’s roots, questioned the premise – institutional players can defeat the whole purpose of crowdfunding – but located the practical answer in the industry’s missing piece: portfolio building. It is easy to invest in one project and hard to build a portfolio across projects and platforms; solve that, technologically and legally, and bundles of deals become investable at institutional scale. Neera Patel added the human layer: large tickets follow relationships and trust built across multiple deals, not single transactions. Whether larger capital pools can coexist with meaningful participation by the crowd is a question of deliberate design, not an assumption.

Karsten Wenzlaff then raised the series’ horizon.

“My personal dream would be that we get an equity crowdfunding campaign for a startup where we raise five million euros in Germany on one platform, another five million US dollars on a US platform, and the equivalent in Singapore – for the same startup. It shows that the investor communities in Europe, in the US, in Asia have all validated this idea.” – Karsten Wenzlaff, Secretary General, German Crowdfunding Association

He was blunt about why it matters: many people, in Brussels, Berlin and beyond, say Europe can never compete with Silicon Valley capital for foundational AI, quantum and deep tech. “I want to say: no, this is not true. It is possible. But we need to provide the infrastructure as an industry – jointly, hopefully.”

What would it take for crowdfunding to grow tenfold?

Asked to imagine the industry ten times its current size a decade from now, the panellists’ answers converged into a single agenda:

  • Mainstream adoption and investor success stories (Jason Fishman) – more IPOs and liquidity events that turn early crowd investors’ returns into headlines: the visible evidence a maturing market must produce if it wants to be judged as investment rather than participation alone.
  • Portfolio building and easier research (Konstantin Boyko) – the technological and regulatory plumbing that lets investors, retail and institutional, compare, monitor and diversify across deals and platforms.
  • Investors moving money off deposit (Uli Fricke) – savers willing to put more to work in crowdfunding than in the bank account with fixed interest – and, with Fishman, IPOs of crowdfunded companies.
  • Cross-border deals (Neera Patel) – campaigns raising across different parts of the globe – and “know your own agent”: investors reviewing many deals, with full risk profiles, letting agents assist while humans keep the final decision.
  • Policymaker recognition (Karsten Wenzlaff) – governments understanding that equity crowdfunding boosts the innovativeness and competitiveness of whole industries, not just finance, and that ground-level investment is how innovations reach the market.

What signals will show the market entering its next phase?

Watch five indicators, set out at the close of the first round table by Giancarlo Vergine: rising average round sizes; institutional participation; cross-border participation; secondary liquidity – the trigger of the market flywheel; and platform consolidation alongside specialisation. Kieron O’Brien’s overarching signal sits above them all: whether platforms remain campaign marketplaces or become genuine private market infrastructure providers – driven by investor sophistication rising faster than he would have predicted five years ago, and by the blurring line between retail and institutional capital. Jill Storey added the unglamorous one that decides whether any of it persists: platform economics, and whether the model can sustain the platforms themselves.

What this means: the agenda ahead

The series ends where GECA’s work begins. The practical steps named by the panels form a convening agenda that no single platform, association or regulator can deliver alone – proposals to test, not achievements secured:

  • Mutual recognition of compliance standards. “If a platform is regulated in one country, we should be able to respect that from another country,” Woodie Neiss argued. “Why does the US baseline need to be the one? Just collaboration.”
  • Let retail investors invest anywhere. Meseret Warner’s practical reform: accredited investors can already back opportunities in any market; give retail investors the same freedom within their existing caps. Diaspora communities move remittances across borders every day – “but as soon as we say investment, oh my goodness, there are obstacles. That’s my dream.”
  • A common definition of the digital public offer. Karsten Wenzlaff’s proposal: identify the core functionalities and governance of a digitally intermediated public offer, and let regulations that meet those core elements accept each other as equivalent – with a simple shared data stream of live offerings so platforms can find each other and mount joint campaigns.
  • Engage the institutions built for shared infrastructure. Europe’s single licence proved disparate jurisdictions can converge, Bruce Davis noted – and the global bodies with innovation remits are the natural next conversation. “GECA is potentially at a point now where it’s got sufficient voice to take that to those sorts of institutions.”

The through-line of all three conversations is Andy Field’s closing observation: the future of crowdfunding isn’t simply about crowdfunding platforms. It is about how technology, regulation, investors, entrepreneurs and capital markets come together – and how the industry builds an ecosystem that is more connected, more efficient and more accessible.

The series has delivered something more useful than a universal formula: a way to evaluate progress – call it the GECA crowdfunding ecosystem test. Ask of any market – and of the global market the industry now contemplates – whether entrepreneurs can raise suitable capital, whether investors can make informed decisions and ultimately see outcomes, whether platforms can operate sustainably, and whether regulation and infrastructure make those connections trustworthy and repeatable. The next decade belongs to the markets that can answer those questions together.

This series is phase one of GECA’s Future of Crowdfunding Initiative 2026–27. Its findings now feed the Global Industry Survey, a Delphi-style study of the GECA community, testing where expert consensus exists and where genuine disagreement remains – on tokenisation, institutional capital and AI delegation above all – followed by a findings webinar and the flagship Future of Crowdfunding Report in Q1 2027.

Methodology

This report synthesises GECA’s Think Tank Series 2026: three recorded round tables held on 24–26 August 2026, hosted by Andy Field (Steering Committee Lead, GECA), co-hosted by Karsten Wenzlaff (Secretary General, German Crowdfunding Association), with eleven invited panellists – twelve contributing industry leaders in all, from established and emerging markets across four continents. All findings, figures and quotations are drawn solely from the on-air recordings, lightly edited for clarity; post-recording discussion was excluded. Figures are presented as their speakers described them in August 2026, attributed to the sources the speakers named, and do not constitute an independently audited dataset. Where a speaker gave a figure from their own experience rather than a named dataset, it is presented explicitly as their account. The discussions are qualitative expert evidence, not a representative survey. Forward-looking views are presented as the scenarios and proposals they were, not as forecasts. Views are those of individual participants, not the positions of GECA or participants’ organisations.

Watch the series: Episode 1 – Fewer Deals, Bigger Cheques · Episode 2 – One Foot on the Handbrake · Episode 3 – Who Decides, at thegeca.org/geca-think-tank-2026/

GECA is the trusted convener of the worldwide regulated crowdfunding community, with more than 100 member organisations across six continents. Become a member or supporter: https://thegeca.org/join