"Deep tech" means companies built on a scientific or engineering breakthrough, usually in hardware, where the main early risk is technical and the path to revenue runs through factories, power plants, rockets, chips or government procurement. Climate tech and defense tech are its two largest commercial categories. They raise the hardest question in venture: how do you finance companies that need hundreds of millions to billions of dollars before they can prove their unit economics, using a fund structure designed for capital-light software? Venture got this badly wrong in Cleantech 1.0 (2006–2011). It has been trying to do better since, with mixed results: SpaceX and Anduril on one side, Northvolt and the 2021 EV-SPAC class on the other.
What the study covers
- 1Overview
- 2Mechanics: the hard-tech capital stack
- 3Key numbers
- 4Landmark cases
- 5Pitfalls
- 6How an expert thinks about it
- 7Glossary
Technical exhibits
Worked examples, checklists and case studies included with this study.
Cleantech 1 0 Bust Case Study
2006–2013: the money, the companies (Solyndra, A123, Fisker, Better Place, KiOR), why it failed, and what Climate 2.0 changed
Foak Capital Stack Worked Example
Financing a first-of-a-kind plant with all equity vs. a project-finance stack; dilution and expected value to existing holders; IRR versus time for long-duration deep tech. All computed by script
Defense Tech Primer
How the Pentagon buys, SBIR/OTA/Program of Record pathways, the "valley of death," the neoprime model (Anduril), Europe's rearmament, and diligence questions