More than 500 scientists, engineers, founders and investors will gather on Thursday, October 8, at 93 Feet East in Shoreditch for Deep Tech London, an event bringing technology off laptops and into the real world. Among the innovations being demonstrated are humanoid robots, rockets, brain-computer interfaces, batteries, photonics and biotech breakthroughs.
The term “deep tech” describes companies building tools that can make difficult advances in science or engineering, rather than just another app or software service. “I interpret deep tech as this research and development [R&D]-heavy, science-heavy research side of technology,” says Lachlan Chavasse, founder of the summit.
UK ranks third in deep tech funding
The UK ranks third in the world for deep tech venture capital raised since 2019, behind the US and China, according to a recent analysis by Dealroom and the Royal Academy of Engineering. Companies spun out of university research labs account for a third of UK venture-backed deep tech companies founded since 2010.
Imperial College’s White City campus is one such hub, housing more than 100 science and technology businesses. This year the campus also opened a pilot manufacturing facility for deep tech firms trying to make the leap from lab prototype to scale production.
Biotech start-up using AI for dementia
One company presenting at the summit is Prima Mente, a biotech start-up using foundation models — the kind of AI technology that powers ChatGPT — to better understand neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. “Understanding biology has always been incredibly difficult,” says Hannah Madan, Prima Mente’s co-founder. The company is using AI to analyse biological information, from genomics to proteins, and looking for patterns that might distinguish different forms of dementia. It has around five petabytes of data already rifled through — equivalent to 1.7 million hours of the highest quality streaming video on Netflix.
“We want to use that technology to understand the sequences within biology and how they connect to each other, which we haven’t been able to do in the past,” Madan says. Prima Mente says one model has achieved 89 per cent accuracy in detecting early-stage Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s from blood samples — though turning research results into routine medicine is a much longer road.
Other deep tech innovations on show
South London-based Rivan is building machinery that uses solar power, water and carbon dioxide captured from the air to make synthetic methane, and deployed a one-megawatt system in August. Its aim is to make synthetic fuels cheaper than fossil fuels. It’s now working with Wales & West Utilities on what they say will become Britain’s first commercial synthetic natural gas facility connected to the national grid.
Oxford spinout Lumai is developing processors that use beams of light to perform calculations needed by large AI models, raising more than $10m last year to reduce the energy needed for AI use. Space Forge, a Welsh company trying to manufacture advanced semiconductor materials in orbit, has successfully generated plasma in low-Earth orbit on its ForgeStar-1 satellite.
Challenges remain for the sector
Those involved in the sector recognise the challenges. Deep tech is expensive and slow work, and companies can pursue an idea only to realise in testing that it’s not feasible. Britain is exceptionally good at generating the science, but weaker at funding companies once they need cash to keep testing ideas. Domestic investors supplied 57 per cent of early-stage UK deep tech funding between 2023 and 2025, but accounted for only 18 per cent of money in funding rounds above $100m, according to Dealroom. US investors supplied 59 per cent at that stage.
For Chavasse, putting actual machines in front of people at something like Deep Tech London matters. He wants more people to realise that deep tech is something they can participate in — and see the benefits of. The goal is to “help people see what the next steps might be, so that they can be a part of building this future in this country,” he says.
