In 2025, Sentient focused on strengthening the investigative ecosystem for animals in India and across Asia, while continuing to support investigations globally. Alongside direct investigative support, we invested in research, training, equipment access, and convenings to better understand why evidence so often fails to translate into sustained advocacy, legal action, and reform.
This post provides a high-level overview of our 2025 work and outlines how key learnings from the year shaped our priorities for 2026–2030.
2025 at a glance
Over the past year, Sentient worked across four core areas: investigations, infrastructure and technical support, training and convening, and research and strategy development.
Investigative ecosystem research
- Published Uncovering Cruelty: The Investigative Landscape in India, based on consultations with investigators and advocates and a review of how investigations are currently conducted, supported, and used in India.
- The research identified persistent gaps in:
- Investigator safety and wellbeing
- Legal and technical support
- Training pathways
- Coordination between investigations and advocacy actors
This work became a central input into Sentient’s updated long-term strategy and theory of change for India-focused work.
Investigations and exposure
- Supported multiple investigations through equipment, technical guidance, and coordination.
- Sentient’s Zetta AR1 camera was used in several investigations, including a high-profile slaughterhouse investigation by L214 in France.
- Some investigations supported through our work reached large international audiences, including exposure on Chinese social media platforms, with comments indicating shifts in attitudes toward animal consumption.
Due to safety and legal risks, not all investigations supported in 2025 are public.
Infrastructure, tools, and technical support
A significant share of Sentient’s work in 2025 focused on reducing practical and operational barriers faced by investigators.
- Supported the deployment and purchase of 162 investigative cameras across organisations and individuals.
- Provided direct technical, cybersecurity, equipment, networking, and operational support to 41 activists, investigators, and animal organisations globally.
- Continued to develop Animalist, an open resource library for investigators:
- 256 investigative resources
- 34 active users
This support aimed to reduce personal risk, improve evidence quality, and enable investigators to operate more safely and effectively.
Training and community-building
In 2025, Sentient invested heavily in training and convening investigators and advocates across regions.
- Webinars
- Co-hosted Using Investigations to Grow Your Activism with India Animal Fund and FIAPO (40 participants from across India).
- Hosted Introduction to Investigations for Asian activists with Welfare Matters (19 participants from 5 countries).
- First Asia Investigations Symposium (co-organised with Reporters for Animals International)
- 57 participants from 10+ countries
- 82% from Asia, 55% from India
- 90% rated sessions highly
- 40+ verified investigators connected through follow-up coordination
- Investigations Masterclass
- Conducted two cohorts of our free, 12-week Investigations Masterclass in 2025
- Observed more than a twofold increase in participation between cohorts
Across all training formats, participants consistently highlighted the value of practical case studies, regionally relevant examples, and peer connection.
What we learned in 2025
Across research, investigations, training, and convenings, a consistent pattern emerged.
The core constraint facing investigations in India and across Asia is not a lack of cruelty, evidence, or motivation, but the absence of a functioning system that allows evidence to reliably lead to media coverage, legal action, and advocacy outcomes.
Common challenges observed included:
- Investigators operating without legal or mental health support
- Limited access to reliable and secure equipment
- Fragmented and informal training pathways
- Evidence remaining unused or weakly integrated into campaigns
- Large and neglected sectors remaining under-documented
These observations led us to rethink our role. Rather than focusing primarily on increasing the number of investigations conducted, we identified greater leverage in strengthening the infrastructure around investigations.
How this shaped our 2026–2030 priorities
Learning from 2025 directly informed Sentient’s 2026–2030 strategy and theory of change for India-focused work.
From 2026–2030, Sentient will focus on repairing the evidence-to-impact pipeline by investing in:
- Investigator capacity and workforce development
- Safety, legal, mental health, and technical support systems
- A consistent pipeline of high-quality, advocacy-ready investigations
- Collaboration and coordination across organisations and regions
We see our role as an anchor organisation: supporting investigators and partner organisations without replacing them, and helping build shared infrastructure that the wider movement can rely on.
→ Full 2026–2030 strategy here
Looking ahead
In 2026, our focus will be on:
- Expanding investigator training and support programs
- Deepening regional collaboration across India and Asia
- Continuing strategic investigations where clear gaps remain
- Iterating on our approach based on ongoing learning and feedback
We expect this work to remain complex and uncertain. However, we believe that treating investigations as movement infrastructure, rather than isolated outputs, offers a stronger chance of durable, compounding impact.
Funding context
In 2025, Sentient operated with a budget of approximately $140K, supported by a combination of institutional grants and individual donors. This funding enabled the research, investigative support, training, and convening work described above.
Looking ahead to 2026, Sentient plans to operate with a budget of approximately $207K. Based on current commitments, we anticipate a funding gap of approximately $185K. Additional funding would primarily support investigator training and wellbeing, shared equipment access, and coordination infrastructure across India and Asia.
More details on our funding and plans are available here.
Gratitude to the supporters
We are deeply grateful to the investigators, activists, partner organisations, and supporters who made this work possible in 2025. We welcome feedback and discussion from the EA community.
Thank you for all of this essential work! I’m curious how you’re thinking about the role that advances in AI could play in repairing the evidence to impact pipeline: do you find that a significant amount of time is currently spent on manual tasks like evidence review and analysis aligned with identifying legal violations, transcription, creating exposé videos, or similar work?
Thank you for the question. This is something we are actively exploring, but cautiously. My response reflects limited direct exposure to investigations and is largely informed by the Indian context.
Yes, a significant amount of time is spent on manual work such as reviewing large volumes of footage, identifying legally relevant moments, transcription, translation, redaction, and assembling evidence for lawyers, media, or campaigns. These are all areas where AI could plausibly reduce friction in the evidence-to-impact pipeline.
That said, a few constraints shape our thinking:
Where we see near-term promise is in assistive and investigator-controlled tools (e.g. secure transcription, translation, basic indexing, and first-pass flagging) that reduce cognitive load without replacing judgment.
Longer term, AI may help standardise evidence preparation so investigations are more consistently advocacy- and litigation-ready. For now, our priority is ensuring the surrounding infrastructure is strong enough that any future technical gains actually translate into impact.
We expect our thinking here to evolve as both the tools and the investigative ecosystem mature.