Every Rose Has Its Thorn
Current Strengths and Challenges for Deeptech Areas
Happy Valentine’s Day! This week we deep focus on a review of the recent strengths (roses) and challenges (thorns) for each deeptech area.
This Week’s Deep Focus: Deeptech Trends
In a little over a fortnight from my deeptech area primers, here are some of the current trends:
AI
Roses: Deregulation continues to get a boost as JD Vance clearly stated the US position at the AI Summit in France. Data centers and Nvidia chips still remain vital even though the majority of people reacted to Deepseek without understanding all the other AI needs for data centers like inference.
Thorns: OpenAI is facing the danger of copyright infringement with the first lawsuit loss, paving the way for more.
Energy
Roses: The Secretary of the DOE clearly supports a nuclear power renaissance as well as many other countries including South Korea, India, France, Poland, and more.
Thorns: Renewables, especially wind, are actively losing support with more projects scuttled each day.
Quantum Computing
Roses: Quantum computing is a strategic advantage and will continue to get funding even though it is farther from application than other deeptech areas.
Thorns: Like many deeptech areas, workforce development is a challenge but even more so that many people do not realize that the majority of quantum jobs do not require a PhD or even graduate school. Given the early stage of quantum computing, the misunderstanding of the tech by the public and investors can lead to a hype cycle with overestimation early and underestimation late.
Space
Roses: Mars saw a boost with the inauguration and continues to be the target for Musk whose sway in the Trump administration grows.
Thorns: Boeing’s SLS program is fraught with cost overruns and delays and looks to be cut or truncated at best. Therefore, the Artemis program to return to the moon may crumble unless Blue Origin and others fill the gap and desire to provide rocket launches to the Moon, ceding Mars to SpaceX.
Synthetic Biology
Roses: Biomanufacturing at home has an advantage when tariffs are in play. AI + bioengineering continues to gain traction for accelerating scientific breakthroughs.
Thorns: With RFK Jr.’s confirmation, desire to reduce prices, and tariffs for biomanufacturing abroad, pharma is facing challenging times.
Deep Tech News & More
AI
The Next Deepseek: Yet another impressive AI model from China, this time from tech giant Alibaba called Qwen. 8 min read
AI + Bio: France’s Capgemini announced a new generative AI model to predict the most effective protein variants to drive breakthroughs reducing required model data by 99%. 3 min read
Energy
X-Energy Xtra Money: Axiom Space and Intuitive Machines founder raised $700M to build small modular reactors (SMRs). 2 min read
European Nuclear Alliance: Almost 15 European countries have committed to strengthening the European nuclear industry. 3 min read
Nuclear Midwest Style: Illinois with a couple of bills to designate classify nuclear reactors as renewable energy facilities and lift the cap on nuclear plant size. 2 min read
Quantum
Quantum Strategic Need: My friends over at SandboxAQ were just invited to join the NATO Defence Innovation Accelerator for their work on navigation that is impossible to spoof or jam. 3 min read
Mo Money Mo Quantum: As I mentioned before, early applications of current quantum capability are applicable to the smaller states spaces of financial securities as opposed to chemistry and protein behavior. 2 min read
Space
Space Strategic Need: As mentioned many times before, space assets are critical infrastructure and a bipartisan bill aims to codify it. 1 min read
SLS and Moon Trouble: MECO podcast guest Eric Berger from Ars Technica discusses Boeing’s job cuts and the implications for SLS and the Artemis program to go back to the moon. 43 min listen
Synthetic Biology
The AWS of Synbio: Gingko Bioworks series finale reviewing how they provide an AWS-like service to the industry, which lowers the barrier to entry for new startups and more innovation. 6 min watch
Biomanufacturing Midwest Style: Liberation Labs raises another $50M ($125M total) to build their first biomanufacturing plant in Indiana. 3 min read
Your Future Career: Communities and Resources
You do not have to be a scientist to work at any of these companies. They need all kinds of skills like any company, especially with regards to commercialization. So don’t exclude yourself from an exciting career. For an overview and a whole host of resources for each of the deep tech areas, see this post and this other post of mine.
TWiML: I attended one the first events that This Week In Machine Learning (TWiML) ever ran and it was better than any other AI conference I had attended. Sam Charrington runs a wonderful podcast series as well as a community section with study groups on Slack.
Ignition News: Great easy to read resource for keeping up with what is going on in the nuclear industry.
Quantum Biology Speaker Series: Weekly speaker series hosted by my friend Prof Clarice Aiello on various topics in quantum biology.
Quantum Computing: My friend Marianna Bonanome at SandboxAQ has lots of resources from podcasts to explainers, including a new residency program for graduate students.
Space Ambition: Regular video office hours where they break down the business case for space tech for current and future founders and advisors.
Synbiobeta May 5-8 2025 in San Jose, CA: One of a few of my favorite communities run by my friend John Cumbers for synthetic biology with tracks including space medicine and brain computer interfaces. Highly recommend it if you are a student, a founder, or investor. Students can get reduced or free access if accepted to volunteer at the event or some sponsored tickets have been possible via my friends over at Nucleate. Many and increasing number of international groups including my friends over at the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA).