What is deep tech?

Swati Chaturvedi is cited as being the originator of the phrase and the concept of ‘deep tech’. She coined the phrase when looking for a way to differentiate and characterise startups in the life sciences, energy, clean technology, computer sciences, materials, and chemicals from other, more general, ‘high tech’. Chaturvedi defined its meaning as “companies founded on tangible scientific discovery or meaningful engineering innovation”. In an early post on the subject, she also gives some examples of deep tech businesses “a new medical device or technique fighting cancer, data analytics to help farmers grow more food, or a clean energy solution trying to lessen the human impact on climate change”.

Not long after this term had begun to gather traction, while working with a startup founder on some investor pitches, one particular investor we were speaking to was particularly focused on whether or not the business would be considered ‘deep tech’, which was a priority for his portfolio selection criteria. 

The business in question had not developed new science or engineering capabilities, but it had configured a unique, very technical solution that utilised a number of highly advanced recent innovations in engineering and computer vision. While those underlying innovations were undoubtedly deep tech, they were developed by someone else. We wrestled with whether or not to define the business as ‘deep tech’. In the end, we settled on saying it was not, but explaining that deep tech underpinned the solution the startup was developing. I’m not sure whether the outcome would have been different had we said ‘yes’ to being true deep tech, but this poses an interesting question to muse over for the purpose of this post. 

Should only those startups developing the foundational technology be referred to as deep tech, or can startups using deep tech in a solution-specific way also be referred to as deep tech? 

One could argue that Chaturvedi’s definitions point to both. She specifically references those developing the underlying technology but a number of the examples she gives could easily be successful businesses without having done the deep tech development themselves. Clearly, there are different layers to the tech and also different layers to the commercialisation approach. 

At DeepTech Commercialisation we are very happy to consider the broader definition as valid. From our perspective, either can be successfully commercialised with the right approach. Or, either could be a real headache to commercialise if the startup doesn’t develop an appropriate commercialisation strategy for its own unique position.

If you have not read these posts from Swati Chaturvedi before, we strongly recommend them:
Early post from 2015 “So What Exactly is 'Deep Technology'​?”

Updated thoughts from 2021 “The definition of Deep Technology”. 

What do you think?

Should both be considered deep tech?