What is deep tech A look at how it could shape the future Antoine Gourvitch
Transcriber: Leslie Gauthier
Reviewer: Joanna Pietrulewicz
In this research lab,
I discovered a story
that is swiftly changing our world.
A story that has the power to change
the way we produce material,
the way we eat
and the way we heal.
It is the story of deep tech.
Deep tech is a new chapter
in the innovation story,
bringing together science,
engineering and design thinking.
Imagine if another global pandemic happens
and the drug to combat it was developed
and approved not in decades or years,
but in months or even in weeks.
Deep tech offers this potential.
Imagine technologies like robotics,
synthetic biology,
nanomaterial,
blockchain,
quantum computing
and many others –
when combined with each other
and blended with engineering
and design science,
are making what’s seemingly
impossible possible.
So what is deep tech?
I’ve spent the last 18 months
visiting 100 research labs
and start-ups
from Shenzhen in China to Haifa in Israel,
and this is what I learned
about deep tech ventures.
They focus on fundamental issues,
identifying physical constraints
of industries not solved for decades.
For example,
in energy, nuclear fusion;
in mobility, air robotaxi.
They work as a close hub
of emerging technologies.
Like synthetic biology,
quantum programming,
artificial intelligence
and many others,
they focus on physical product
using data and digital platform
to accelerate the test-and-run phase.
They rely on an ecosystem
to accelerate the innovation cycle,
including the build-and-test phase.
Too many disciplines are necessary
to master for one venture to go alone.
It is about cooperation,
not competition.
Deep tech is ultimately
transforming discovery
into a design and engineering exercise.
So …
why does it matter?
It matters because it is happening now,
all around us,
ongoing.
This approach is changing
what was once considered impossible
into something actively possible today.
Take SpaceX,
a deep tech pioneer
who disrupted the aerospace industry
by producing reusable
rockets and spaceships,
reducing the cost of going to space
by a factor of 10.
They achieved this by combining
advanced materials
and chemicals developed
in the last 20 years
with vertical integration
and the modular approach
of modern software engineering.
Or PASQAL,
the start-up founded by several students
of my friend, Alain Aspect,
creatively using fundamental physics
combined with software engineering
and data science
to create an analog quantum processor.
Or take Boston-based Ginkgo Bioworks
founded by internet pioneer Tom Knight
and a group of MIT scientists.
A visit to Ginkgo showed me a lab
I had never seen before.
I saw a fully automated bioworks lab
with the latest robotic techniques,
allowing to test thousands
of biological designs.
They achieved this by building
the largest internal metagenomics database
of cells, enzymes and genetic programming
by combining robotics,
protein design,
both in microorganism
and mammalian cells
and data science.
They have built
a cell programming platform
able to create nearly
any organism they want
by converging science,
technology
and data and digital platform
then to become the Amazon
web services of biology,
letting start-ups and other
companies use their facilities.
This is a perfect example
of the ecosystem operating.
So right now many of you may be thinking,
how do we manage the technological risk?
Will investors be ready
to play the deep tech game?
Yes, there is a technological risk.
And developing deep tech requires
to rethink our innovation approach.
I have seen that four rules
govern successful deep tech ventures.
Rule number one:
be problem oriented,
not technology focused.
This is very important.
Many deep tech ventures start
with a solution in search of a problem.
Ginkgo partnered with Bayer
to solve the nitrogen fertilizer issue.
Nitrogen is the most-used fertilizer
in the world today.
But it produces three percent
of greenhouse gases
and it pollutes water.
Many start-ups today
are trying to solve this issue
by applying their solutions.
Ginkgo tried to solve it
by asking the question in another way:
what if instead of producing nitrogen,
we create a bacteria
that use existing nitrogen
to fixate it on the roots of the plants,
just like nature does?
Rule number two:
it is about combining,
intersecting, converging.
So you need to bring
a cross-disciplinary team early on
and play the ecosystem.
What does that mean concretely?
Take Commonwealth Fusion Systems,
an energy venture focusing
on nuclear fusion.
They achieved their breakthrough
in nuclear fusion
by combining advances
in material and data science
that enabled them to do
calculation and simulation
that was simply not doable
a few years back.
And they play the ecosystem very well.
Corporates like ENI and Equinor
have invested early on.
Universities like the MIT
Plasma Science and Fusion Centers
are actively collaborating with them.
VCs like Breakthrough
Energy Ventures and others,
are supporting them,
and the US government
seems interested in working with them.
Rule number three:
adopt a design thinking approach
powered by deep tech.
Identify assumptions early on to be tested
to reduce the risk up front.
Get to a working prototype
as quickly as possible.
Anticipate friction points
at each stage of the innovation cycle.
Use a data and digital platform
to reduce the cost of testing them.
Lilium Aviation,
a deep tech start-up
building all-electric air taxi,
aiming at solving urban air mobility,
has started by developing
a two-seater prototype,
then a five-seater using
real-time data of every flight
to design the next version.
Rule number four:
adopt a design-to-cost approach.
Merging science with engineering
requires to have the economics in mind
all the time.
Zymergen,
another synthetic biology lighthouse,
whenever they design a product,
use a ruthless design-to-cost approach.
In the design phase,
even before production starts,
they look for the right products
at the right costs
with the right parameters.
Zymergen developed Hyaline
a transparent, printable
circuit for electronics,
produced by fermentation.
And this biobased film is cheaper
and has better properties
than the existing one,
petroleum-based.
Deep tech is maturing quickly now.
In 2019, there were more
than 5,000 deep tech ventures
fueled by 50 billion dollars
of investors and their money.
Ventures coming out of research labs
have the power to solve
our most pressing issues.
Think what you would like
to grow in your world.
Consider how might deep tech
help you cultivate that thing,
maybe by accelerating a drug development
or by eliminating greenhouse gases
or perhaps by solving the congestion
problem plaguing your city.
Deep tech is an ever-growing
opportunity in front of us,
waiting to be scaled
for this world and more.
It is the next chapter
in the innovation story,
and today I invite all of you
to join me in its creation.
Thank you.