Colleagues are organizing a mini-conference on the theme of technofinancial capital in Glasgow next year as part of SASE 2027.

This mini conference focuses on the financing of novel technologies that are explicitly disruptive in their mandates. In an age where new technologies like green tech, blockchain and artificial intelligence seem increasingly consequential in mediating all aspects of life, it is of crucial importance to not only discuss the implications of the adoption of such technologies, but also examine the nexus of capital from which these technologies emerge.  This mini conference examines all aspects surrounding the topic of Technofinancial Capital. It looks at its capital flow, interactive-discursive dynamics, innovation culture, deal-making and value-ascribing heuristics, future-oriented imaginations, as well as all other directions that help establish a full understanding of Technofinancial Capital. We bring together a multi-disciplinary field spanning accounting, economic sociology and STS. It is additionally timely to the conference theme, as several of the technologies financed by the Technofinancial Capital nexus, like artificial intelligence, have the potential to be, or rather currently is, a disruptive force that may fundamentally reconfigure productivity, wealth distribution and societal structures. To fully tackle these issues, we must first establish a good understanding of what creates these technologies, and to do that, we must understand how it is financed and selected before these technologies enter the public sphere. This mini conference on Technofinancial Capital is timely in discourses on creative reconstruction—it is through understanding what it is now, that conversations on reconfiguration might take place.

 

Technofinancial Capital specialises in the financing of highly uncertain, extremely risky new technological ventures. They operate as angel investors, venture capital funds, growth funds, accelerators, incubators, and family offices. This is a global field, with capital capture and allocation spanning all geographic locales. Yet, it is also highly concentrated in clusters, the most prominent of which are, Silicon Valley, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, and London. These associations of capital are usually private in nature and remain inaccessible to the general public as investment prospects.

 

The last few decades have seen an increasing shift of capital flow towards Technofinancial Capital as the primary financier of technological innovations in their prospective phase. Startups need first to navigate the venture financing pipeline—denoted by its distinct selection and filtering structure via financing rounds—before it reaches the public market through IPOs, trade sales or M&As. Within this venture financing ecosystem, the lifecycle of a prospective startup is underpinned by inter-VC dynamics that nevertheless determine financing availability. VCs, and other forms of Technofinancial Capital, rely on metrics and judgements beyond what are traditionally established in the public financial market. In the absence of cashflows or revenue, investors in this field instead orient their actions on proxies and signals such as social relationships, peer participations, market sentiments and future-oriented imaginaries. These processes and dynamics are important aspects of academic inquiry, as they are 1) consequential as to what technologies, and in what forms said technologies, are selected to be financed and developed; and 2) distinct from the modus operandi of other traditional financial markets so as to warrant investigation in its own right as a unique market form.