Deep-tech: Shaping the Future

By bringing together science, engineering, and design thinking, Deep-tech is, by itself, becoming a new chapter in the #innovation story of our digital, scientific, business, and technological world. Deep-technology requires considerable R&D in order for companies to develop practical business or consumer applications and thus concretely bring them from the lab to the market. When combined together and blended with engineering and design science, technologies like robotics, synthetic biology, nanomaterial, artificial intelligence, blockchain, quantum computing, and many others are solving human problems of historic proportions such as global warming and plausible global pandemics and are making what seems impossible, possible. In other words, Deep-technologies have a significant impact, take a considerably long time to reach market-ready maturity, and require an important and major amount of capital.

#deeptech ventures focus on fundamental issues and work on identifying physical constraints in industries that have not been solved for decades. They make sure to pinpoint problems that are simultaneously meaningful, feasible, and significant to be then considered “Deep teach ready”. For example, in the energy sector, the issue is nuclear fusion whereas in mobility, it’s air robotaxi, etc.

That being said, Deep-tech ventures rely on an ecosystem to accelerate the innovation cycle and they also work on creating a physical product, using data and a digital platform, in order to expedite the test-and-run phase which is a key phase given the importance of ensuring that the product in question fully does its job.

The underlying complicated problems solved by these Deep-tech companies from all over the world generate valuable intellectual property and are relatively hard to produce.

What actually makes a Deep-tech venture successful? How does a Deep-tech company achieve its goals?

A successful Deep-tech company focuses on solving important, fundamental issues by operating at the convergence of technologies. In other words, affluent ventures use their best technologies to address complex human problems, thus enabling them to develop an upright operating system.

Converging technologies is a key enabler for companies as well, bringing together an intelligible problem orientation, science, and engineering. Successful Deep-tech ventures are also engaged in building physical products, thus bringing the power of data and computation to the physical world. In addition, the #DBTL; the design-build-test-learn cycle is crucial for the triumph of deep ventures as it introduces major advances such as speeding the process and creating competitive advantages. Theoretically, deep-tech ventures are guided by three main questions about themselves and the short-term and long-term goals they set: What do we bring to the ecosystem? What do we want from the ecosystem? And how do we interact with others to achieve our goals? More precisely, Deep-tech ventures take shape across four major moments in which critical questions are addressed:

• Framing the paradigm. Could reality be any different?
• Forging the theory. Is there any way to develop a solution?
• ?Taking the first step. Can we build the solution today?
• Changing the reality. What should happen in order for the solution to become the new normal?

According to BCG, over a five-year period, investment in Deep-tech has quadrupled, and more, from $15 billion in 2016 to more than $60 billion in 2020. In addition, the amount per investment event has increased from $36,000 to $2 million, between 2016 and 2019. Businesses and investors have shown increasing interest in the domain of Deep-technology and have seen the enormous potential it withholds. They are putting more money into companies that conduct authentic, raw and original technological research.

Furthermore, approximately 8,600 Deep-tech companies in the world tackle United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDG) such as good health and well-being, industry, innovation and infrastructure, sustainable cities and communities, climate action, responsible consumption and production, decent work and economic growth, quality of education, no poverty, zero hunger, peace, justice and strong institutions, life below water, affordable and clean energy and gender equality, etc. And today, Deep-tech companies consistently receive more funding than any other kind of tech firms.

However, what are the challenges for Deep-tech? And how can technical risks be managed in this domain that builds upon technical discovery, intellectual capital, convergent innovation and specialized skills and that is at any one time risky and hard?

First of all, although its potential is sky rocking, Deep-tech encounters many challenges such as the need for reimagination, the need to push science boundaries as well as the difficulties in scaling up and in accessing funding.?They take time to move from basic science to a technology that can be applied to actual use cases. In other words, Deep-tech ventures might struggle finding the right business framework, pushing the science boundaries to translate technological capabilities into business applications, having relevant scale-up experience and swiftly shifting from the laboratory stage to investment-based venture funding.

It is undeniable that developing Deep-tech requires rethinking the innovation approach. And in order for startups to manage the risks that come with, they should be problem-oriented, not technology focused and should make their mission about combining, intersecting and converging by bringing in a cross-disciplinary team to play the ecosystem. In addition, these ventures must adopt a design thinking approach powered by Deep-tech by identifying assumptions early on to be tested and anticipating friction points at each stage of the cycle, thus reducing the risk up front and getting to a working prototype, as quickly as possible. Plus, ventures must adopt the design-to-cost approach; in order to merge science with engineering, economics play an extremely important role in order for the company to acknowledge its costs.

What factors complicate Deep-tech investment?

To begin with, market risk plays a major role as companies seek funding way before having a prototype in hands of potential customers. Technology risk also makes it complicated for investors as they do not necessarily have the specific expertise in-house that they need to assess accurately the potential of these emerging ventures. To invest, companies must present a clear vision and also have the required confidence and patience.

Over the past decade, the tech sector has experienced ongoing digital innovation with waves of technological revolution. Deep-tech ventures are considered “the next big thing” that corporations, investors, companies, startups, institutions and governments are looking for.??

Currently, Deep-tech is all around us, it is ongoing and the innovations based on Deep-tech change lives, economies, and societies. To better understand this classification of organization and recognize how real problems are solved with radical innovation and emerging technologies, here are seven examples of Deep-technology ventures: SpaceX, Instoried, Deep Vision, PASQAL, AgNext, and Spyne.

1.????SpaceX has made a sudden breakthrough on decades-old challenges. This Deep-tech pioneer disrupted the aerospace industry by producing reusable rockets and spaceships, thus reducing the cost of going to space by a factor of 10. This has been achieved after they combined advanced materials and chemicals developed during the last 20 years, with vertical integration accompanied with the modular approach of modern software engineering.

2.????Instoried is a tech-based content startup that uses AI to help people write better and produce more lively content by also making messaging crisper and improving headline impact. The company improves empathy and tone ultimately, thus creating a better connection with the target audience. The startup aims to further develop its AI-based content generation tool and expand operations globally.

3.????Deep Vision develops processors for AI edge applications and targets use cases of camera-based industries like retail, smart city installations, driver-monitoring systems and EV, factory automation, and drones.

4.????PASQAL is a startup creatively using fundamental physics combined with software engineering and data science in order to create an analog quantum processor. It is a scalable, reliable and energy-efficient solution that solves the most complex computational problems in science or industries.

5.????AgNext solves the quality analysis problem and provides rapid food quality assessment through a mix of Ai, ml, IoT, and advanced data analysis, while also enhancing the profitability of the supply chain and serving as the crossroads for producers.

6.????Spyne is a startup that helps businesses and marketplaces create and upgrade high-quality product images and videos at scale with AI. The company claims de have developed 100 percent automatic, industry-first AI image processing products that help large e-commerce marketplaces in many industries – automotive, fashion, and retail – enhance the visual value of the images and videos without a physical studio.

?Finally, today, new possibilities are coming into view but new problems are growing as well, thus making humans face emerging challenges that are both meaningful and significant. And according to the Global Startup Ecosystem Report, an annual ranking of startup ecosystems by Startup Genome, Deep-tech represents the fastest-growing group globally, in terms of early-stage funding deals.

Deep tech is rapidly maturing, creating technologies that do not exist, to solve issues and major needs that already exist in the day-to-day lives of people all around the world and the amount of interest, activity, and funding is undergoing an explosion that is as broad as it is deep.

Today, thousands of ventures are solving our most pressing issues and are helping people cultivate whatever it is that would facilitate their lives, Deep-tech is an ever-growing opportunity, unlocking solutions to our problems and making our lives easier.?

So welcome to what is shaping the future; welcome to Deep tech