Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast. Every week, we come together to discuss something new and interesting from the world of emerging digital technologies, hoping to inspire our listeners to learn something new and move ahead in their careers. We have been around for over a year now, and we are very thankful to all our listeners for all the love and support they have given us.
In today’s episode, we talk about something that is quite a buzzing subject as well as a need of the hour for the world today. The topic we will be talking about was once an exclusive province of tech giants and the scientific community, but the times have changed and continue to do so. This is Deep Tech.
What is Deep Tech?
Emerging technologies hold immense potential and promise, but without a way to focus the right tech on the most pressing challenges, companies and the world at large cannot gain their full value. This is where deep tech comes in. Deep tech involves leveraging mature and emerging technologies to solve the largest problems facing the world today while enabling bold business objectives & invigorating value chains.
Deep tech stands for cutting-edge technologies that build on advanced science and engineering innovations to bring disruptive new products to the market. According to an MIT paper, “If innovation is the match between problems like customer needs or opportunities and solutions like technology, business models, etc. then deep tech is the part of the solutions space based on breakthrough science and engineering.
The term ‘deep tech’ was first coined by Swati Chaturvedi, the founder of Propel(X), the world’s first platform dedicated to angel investing in deep tech startups. When the term was coined, it was intended to categorize startups in the life sciences, energy, clean technology, computer sciences, materials, and chemical sectors. However, since then, the definition has evolved and will continue to evolve, it is a more dynamic concept, as is just about everything in tech.
Today, the deep tech space involves cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum computing, blockchain, and much more, more industries have come under its umbrella, including agriculture, aerospace, green energy, mobility, etc.
Irrespective of the industry, a deep tech company would create products and services aiming to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing our species and the planet, be it climate change, illness, food security, or anything of a similar nature. And, there is a growing popularity, demand, as well as need for deep tech startups.
In the first half of 2023 alone, deep tech received over $40 billion worth of venture capital funding and accounted for over 20% of overall venture capital funding as of November 2023.
Now, logically speaking, if there is deep tech, there must also be something called shallow tech, isn’t it?
Well, there is something called shallow tech. Shallow tech is a relatively simple technological advance moving a business from a non-digital business model to a digital one. Advances in shallow tech are easily replicable and don’t disrupt the market much. In contrast, for deep tech, the business starts with and revolves around a real innovative technology that seeks to solve a real-world almost intractable problem.
So, we now understand that deep tech seeks to solve a bigger, more important real-world problem, it makes a real impact. But what else? In what other ways is deep tech different from the rest of the lot?
Well, deep tech requires bigger expenditures on research and development. It also requires a longer time to realize its ROI. Deep technology doesn’t use established engineering tech to meet existing market needs like regular tech. With deep tech, often, things must be built from scratch, which takes not just more time but also more resources.
Additionally, deep tech requires very specific skills and expertise, it is not something everyone can do straightaway since generic skills won’t be a good fit for the space. For instance, a company that the popular deep tech investor WNT Ventures is funding is looking for electrochemists with a very specific niche skillset that less than a dozen people around the world have. So, anyone interested in working in the deep tech space would not just need to sharpen their generic skills but also go deeper into their areas of interest and expertise.
For instance, a deep tech venture could be working to develop tech for predicting natural disasters with greater accuracy much more in advance than is currently possible. This would require studying enormous amounts of data, it would require experts in geology, data science, environmentalists, seismologists, probably marine scientists, and so many more experts. It would also require a big R&D budget, which would take considerable time to make any returns possible. Game-changing developments and disruptions don’t happen overnight, do they? But once the tech has made it to the market, it is usually going to be extremely difficult for there to be any competition in the space who can replicate the same technology easily. And, deep tech usually measures success in terms of the milestones it achieves rather than the money it generates because the aim has always been to make an impact.
One of the popular deep tech startups today is OpenAI – the builder of revolutionary generative AI products. Then there is Nature’s Fynd which makes alternative meat and dairy products using Fy, a fungi-derived protein created by a microbe first discovered in the geothermal hot springs of a supervolcano in the Yellowstone National Park. Then we have Blue Origin, an aerospace manufacturing company founded by Jeff Bezos that develops reusable rockets, rocket engines, and launch vehicles designed to significantly reduce the cost of space exploration. Then we have Valo Health in the healthcare and wellness space that aims to transform the drug discovery and development process using AI, combining clinical data, tissue biology, and machine learning. In the construction and architecture space, there is ICON that is changing the face of architectural manufacturing by using proprietary 3D printing technology, robotics, and advanced materials. ICON has also partnered with NASA to construct the world’s first 3D-printed rocket launch pad. Another interesting deep-tech startup is Xanadu which specializes in the development of photonic quantum computing and is the first startup to have achieved quantum supremacy, meaning its quantum computers were able to outperform a supercomputer in solving a problem. Reportedly, Xanadu’s quantum computer solved a problem in less than a second whereas a supercomputer would have needed over 9,000 years to solve the same problem!
Deep tech is considered important not just for the economic development of the world but also for its potential to create impactful solutions for important societal challenges.
If this is something that sounds like your calling, then the time to start is now. Deep technology requires very sharp skills and in-depth knowledge of the domain. Moreover, most deep tech ventures have blurred boundaries among industries and could call upon expertise in multiple sectors. So, being proactive to learn new things and keeping an open mind is critical. Getting certified to learn some new skills and validate them is an excellent starting point, and for that, Cognixia is the right place to help you. Visit our website www.cognixia.com to learn more about the complete range of our live online instructor-led training and certification courses. You can connect with us directly over the chat function there to get answers to any questions you might have. And then, who knows, you might be working for a cool deep-technology startup soon!
With that, we come to the end of this week’s episode. We will be back next week with another exciting new episode of the Cognixia podcast. Until then, happy learning!
