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issue #3

Hello World,

Welcome to your latest (festive) edition of Deep Thoughts. First time subscribers *hello*, please do get to know our active deep tech portfolio a little better here.  Regular readers, you snow the drill 😉

Since our last edition, we published, in conjunction with the fantastic Ideas 2 Impact,  the “Research to Riches” report.  We wanted to recognise the world-leading research institutions in the UK and their responsibility for a huge number of scientific achievements, whilst beginning to identify examples of best practice and areas for improvement. The ultimate goal is to help support the UK to produce many more pioneering spinouts and to become a global leader in academic entrepreneurialism! We’re an investor in UltraSoC, SLAMcore and Surrey NanoSystems among other spinouts.

We have more blogs on this topic coming out, so watch this space!

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Over the last few weeks we have been:

  • Enjoying this deep tech trends report from SOSV where there are definite echoes of what we have been seeing. In the last 6 weeks alone we’ve seen businesses focusing on voice/audio; 3d printing; post-quantum cryptography; quantum hardware; highly personalised therapeutics; agricultural robotics and next generation localisation and positioning.
  • Excited by the massive fundraise for PsiQ a UK-founded business now in the Valley with a silicon photonics approach to quantum computing. Congratulations to Jeremy and the team! If you’re interested in the approach, this is a great paper on the benefits/challenges of using photons to do quantum computing.
  • Impressed by researchers who have developed a neural network able to recreate human brain waves in real-time. Check out the paper here.
  • Paying attention to how tech giants like FB and Google are lobbying the US Congress to influence the privacy debate.
  • Loving useful robots – which in this case are autonomous snow-shovelling robots out of Estonia.
  • Intrigued by a machine that converts large data archives into invisible pellets of DNA.
  • Fascinated by this discovery which opens up the door to explore new drugs targeting viruses, cancer and exobiology (extra-terrestrial life), as well as the fact that evolution on Earth may have experimented with several different molecular designs for storing genetic information before DNA ultimately won out.
  • Asking where the line is with biohacking? Scientists have engineered retinal implants that replace non-functional photoreceptors in blind patients, and connect directly to the optical nerve to restore vision.
  • Worried about the carbon footprint all of our technological progress may be making but starting to wade through this tome from an amazing set of ML experts about how climate change can be tackled with ML and hoping there are some great suggestions for future founders who we can back!
  • If you want a whole load of VC learning in one dump, then check out these Bites from LionBird VC. We’ve thought about and iterated on many things listed out here, but there’s always more to learn from smart folk!
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Please find here all the available jobs at our incredible portfolio companies, with some specific highlights from our deep tech portfolio who are looking for:

  • New Partnerships Manager at ThirdEye
  • Engineer at SLAMcore
  • Senior Counsel at WaveOptics
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We love to share geeky papers and always enjoy a pun-swapSo if you have something to say, email us here and if you’re just visiting, remember to sign up to receive our next edition and share this link far and wide.

Thanks for reading!

Simon

I’m the one with a background in academia (organic semiconductors specifically) who looks after WaveOptics, Dogtooth and Elvie (to name a select few) and who enjoys building robots, learning new stuff and apparently dressing like Adrian Mole’s father (!)

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