We Built This City
Reindustrialization
Happy Friday! This week we deep focus on the foundation for future deeptech activity: reindustrialization.
This Week’s Deep Focus: Reindustrialization
This week I was fortunate enough to tour the Firefly Aerospace HQ in Austin. We walked through their rocket and spacecraft manufacturing processes and dove into everything from additive manufacturing to spin forming to carbon fiber. They are one example of the return of manufacturing to the US (and Europe), focused on deeptech. So why the interest in the US (and now Europe) in reindustrialization?
The short answer is the shift from globalization to regionalization due to growing conflicts since the invasion of Ukraine. Recently at the Tectonic defense summit in Austin, most defense experts stated that the US and China will be in some kind of hot or cold war in three to five years. Better technology is the only advantage in war if you have a smaller population. Deeptech (AI, bioengineering, quantum, space, energy) is technology that unleashes the most capability and the biggest strategic advantage. Post WWII, the US rapidly lost its ability to manufacture domestically, exacerbated by globalization to provide multinational corporations cheaper labor wage inputs than at home. At the end of WWII, US manufacturing was approximately 25% of GDP and had fallen to 10% by 2023. In contrast, the best estimate for Chinese manufacturing as a percentage of GDP was 26% in 2023.
Unfortunately, you can’t turn on manufacturing capacity with the flip of a switch. It takes time to not only build factories and machines but also time to develop workforce talent from welders to roboticists. The imbalance in US imports from abroad versus what is exported from the US to others (trade deficit) has been growing rapidly since 2000 and in 2024 was $1.2T. The estimated job loss from the trade deficit from 2000 to 2018 alone was about 3M domestic jobs. Reindustrialization is not only important for security, it also provides valuable jobs. Unfortunately, the urgency of the demand will likely need to be supplemented by robotics to close the manufacturing gap. Companies like Solideon, Hadrian, and others are using robotics to speed up or entirely automate some manufacturing while RE:BUILD Manufacturing is focused on STEM apprenticeship to help develop communities and grow jobs. While it will be a lot of work to reindustrialize, we can do it!
Deep Tech News & More
AI
Google Robotics: Google DeepMind releases an impressive “physical AI” model for robots. 3 min watch
A More Powerful DeepSeek: Chinese tech giant Alibaba releases QwQ-32B that leverages reinforcement learning to improve reasoning beyond DeepSeek. 5 min read
Google Gemma 3: Google releases a new AI model that performs almost as well as DeepSeek but the model is 20X smaller, can run directly on devices, and has conversational image generation. 6 min read
Energy
Nuclear Triple Threat: The big tech trifecta of Google, Amazon, and Meta pledge to triple nuclear power by 2050. 2 min read
Canadian Floating Reactors: Prodigy Clean Energy and Lloyd’s Register are collaborating to bring modular and easily transportable floating nuclear reactors to Canada by 2030. 4 min read
French Fusion: Renaissance Fusion raises $35M to advance their stellerator magnetic confinement fusion reactor demo by the end of 2026. 5 min read
Quantum
Quantum Supremacy: D-Wave claims it solved a material science simulation problem in minutes that would have taken a traditional supercomputer about a million years using more energy than the world’s annual electricity consumption! 7 min read
Quantum Energy: The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is funding Infleqtion to use quantum computing to optimize the energy grid. 3 min read
Quantum Sensors: My friends over at the US Department of Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) have selected Lockheed Martin to develop a quantum-enabled Inertial Navigation System (INS) to navigate when denied access to GPS. 3 min read
Space
Chinese Orbital Concerns: The US is increasingly worried about the growing Chinese footprint in geostationary orbit with last week’s launch of TJS-15 to spy or damage satellites of other countries. 4 min read
Relativity Space Searching For CEO: My old boss at Google Eric Schmidt is investing and leading Relativity Space, which speaks to how bad Relativity Space must be doing with raising funds. 5 min read
Climate Change Hits Space: Climate change heating of the Earth cools Low Earth Orbit (LEO) reducing drag on space debris that will keep it up there longer. 2 min read
Synthetic Biology
Biotech Regulation: It’s unclear what the overturning of the Chevron deference will mean for biotech regulation. 10 min read
Mars Bugs: My friends over at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) are going to study microbial life in Alaska to understand how to find life on Mars. 4 min read
Gene Editing Almonds: Verinomics gene editing has made almond plants that yield more and use fewer resources. 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. Plus they have announced their inaugural summit for May 20th in New York City.
Payload Space: It’s a great resource for space startups news in an easy to read format and they have events in different parts of the US.
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).
XPrize Design Studio: Do you have an idea of an XPrize to change the world? You can submit your idea and it might get selected to be funded by the XPrize. This year’s opportunity runs from Feb 18 to Apr 15.
XPrize Adventure Trip: My friends over at the XPrize have. a pretty cool deeptech adventure trip planned for Glasgow, Cambridge, and London. Very cool experience if you aren’t already a practionner plus the people that participate in these trips are great to know.