Investors are pouring money into drone startups

One way to figure out where the tech industry is going is to see what venture capitalists are investing in. Most startups fail, but the two or three that succeed can define the entire industry for an era.

This chart from Statista, based on data from CB Insights, shows that drones could be one of the next big things. VCs invested more than 4x the amount of money into drone-related startups in 2015 as they did in 2014. A lot of other people agree - drones were one of the hottest categories at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, although so far actual consumers seem lukewarm about them. In a recent Accenture survey of more than 28,000 people around the world, only 7% of them said they intend to buy a personal drone in the next year.