Deep Tech Week

Deep Tech Week History this week - 139 years ago Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux founded the Pasteur Institute on June 4, 1887, establishing a cornerstone for microbiology, vaccine development, and biomedical engineering. - 81 years ago the Trinity test on July 16, 1945 demonstrated the first controlled nuclear fission chain reaction, marking the dawn of the atomic age in physics. - 57 years ago Apollo 11 launched on July 16, 1969, culminating in the first human Moon landing and advancing aerospace engineering and materials science. - 212 years ago on July 15, 1814 Humphry Davy isolated several alkali metals including potassium and sodium, expanding electrochemistry fundamentals.

Oratomic closed a $300 million Series A last week to advance fault-tolerant quantum computers built on reconfigurable neutral-atom arrays. Led by ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and Khosla Ventures with participation from Bezos Expeditions, the round targets scalable hardware for utility-scale systems. Neutral-atom platforms offer advantages in qubit count and reconfigurability, addressing key bottlenecks in error correction and connectivity. This capital signals continued momentum in hardware approaches that complement superconducting and trapped-ion efforts. #QuantumComputing #DeepTech #NeutralAtoms

This Week's Deep Tech History - 243 years ago, on June 4 1783, the Montgolfier brothers conducted the first public unmanned hot-air balloon flight in Annonay, France. The 10-minute, 2 km ascent reached roughly 1,600 m and laid the foundation for aerodynamics and controlled flight. - 339 years ago, on July 5 1687, Isaac Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, establishing the laws of motion and universal gravitation that still anchor classical physics and engineering. - 127 years ago, in July 1899, the Wright brothers began systematic glider experiments at Kitty Hawk that would culminate in powered flight four years later. From paper-and-canvas balloons to orbital mechanics, each step compounds the next.

Quantum Systems, the German developer of autonomous unmanned systems for land, air, and sea, closed a $1.2 billion Series D at an $8 billion post-money valuation. Co-led by Blackstone, Noteus, Airbus, and Advent, with participation from Bond, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Balderton, and HV Capital. The round funds expanded production capacity, supply chain scaling, and continued investment in AI software for interoperable families of systems. Airbus Defence and Space is deepening its strategic partnership with the company. #DefenseTech #AutonomousSystems #Aerospace

This Week's Deep Tech History opens with a pattern that repeats across centuries: early June has delivered foundational advances in engineering and physics with surprising regularity. - 157 years ago, Thomas Edison received a patent for his electrographic vote recorder, an early step toward practical electrical systems. - 131 years ago, Charles Duryea secured the patent for the first gasoline-powered automobile in the United States. - 82 years ago, Marvin Camras was granted the patent for the magnetic tape recorder, enabling modern data storage and audio engineering. These dates sit within the same narrow window that has also hosted the birth of Sadi Carnot, whose 1796 work laid the thermodynamic groundwork still used in every heat engine today. The first deep dive in the series examines one of these milestones in detail. Watch for the post later this week.

Deep Tech Week SF brought together founders and investors building frontier hardware companies. Our CEO, Alex Maierean, took the stage at the "Dawn of Photonic Intelligence” session, contributing to discussions on how photonics is shaping sensing and communication capabilities. Great to connect with leading semiconductor innovators and deep tech investors working at the intersection of hardware, AI, and infrastructure. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion and we owe a debt of gratitude to Andrew Côté for the opportunity and vote of confidence! Stage shared with Rafic Makki, Scott Burroughs, Francesco Manegatti, Julia Mossbridge, Patrick Bowen, Thomas Renaudin and Augustin Sayer. #DeepTechWeek #Photonics #DefenceTech #QuantumSensing

SF Deep Tech Week 2026 is wrapped! 105 events, 20,700 attendees, and a front-row seat to seeing the science fiction future coming to life before our eyes. A special thanks to all our Headline Act's during the week - each of these funds pulls their time, team, resources, investors and founders together to help build a community dedicated on revolutionizing the physical world. Drumbeat Capital Steven Jacobs and Lukas Leitner, Voyager Ventures Nare Janvelyan, PhD, Celesta Capital Allison Halen Trevor DeWitt, OVNI Capital with Augustin Sayer and Thomas Renaudin, PsyMed Ventures and E11 Bio Matias Serebrinsky and Jun Axup Penman, Gigascale Capital with Mike Schroepfer and Merrill Feather, Playground Global with Jasmine J., Hadley Wilkins, Rahul Meka, Matter Venture Partners Chelsea Dvorak Deep Tech Week will return Sept 7-12 in Washington DC

Last week the White House issued an executive order updating the national quantum strategy, emphasizing commercialization, supply-chain resilience, and public-private partnerships. The Department of Energy followed with its Quantum Genesis initiative, targeting a fault-tolerant, scientifically relevant quantum computer by 2028 through a new National Quantum Supercomputing User Facility and application-driven benchmarks in chemistry, materials, and physics. These moves build directly on the CHIPS Act quantum foundry commitments and private-sector roadmaps already underway. For hardware builders and researchers, the signal is clear: scaled manufacturing and fault tolerance are now national priorities with explicit timelines. #QuantumComputing #DeepTech #QuantumPolicy

This Week in Deep Tech History 284 years ago, Christian Goldbach wrote to Leonhard Euler proposing that every even integer greater than 2 is the sum of two primes, a conjecture that remains unproven but central to number theory. 207 years ago, John Couch Adams was born; his calculations helped identify Neptune from perturbations in Uranus's orbit. 176 years ago, Karl Ferdinand Braun was born; he developed the first cathode-ray oscilloscope and advanced wireless telegraphy, later earning the Nobel Prize. 93 years ago, Heinrich Rohrer was born; his work on the scanning tunneling microscope enabled the first atomic-scale surface images and earned a Nobel in Physics. #DeepTechHistory #ScienceHistory #Physics #Mathematics