DCVC has released a “report from the front, as seen by our partnership” capturing where they see the future of deep tech – including an additional $1 billion in DCVC investment committed to deep tech, including national security (NatSec) investment and American competitiveness.  Details below. 

DCVC Announces $1 Billion in Fresh Funding

“More than $1 billion in fresh funding for DCVC’s next chapter”

As announced by DCVC: 

“A decade and a half into our work backing deep-tech founders solving the hardest real-world problems compu­ta­tion­ally, we are pleased to announce having just raised more than $1 billion in fresh capital…

From its founding, DCVC has asked a specific question: How can the leading edge of computing be married to emerging capa­bil­i­ties in materials science, biology, chemistry, and other physical domains to bring humanity greater resilience, abundance, and equi­tability? The answer to that question has presented an ever-evolving set of oppor­tu­ni­ties across industries. 

If our firm was born of the hunch that this was the right question, it has grown through evidence that those who dream without illusion —
entre­preneurs who unite technical ambition with operational pragmatism — merit venture capital investment.

DCVC’s insistence that we back companies with a competitive advantage rooted in AI or computing innovation led to early successes with scale-out technology that was the prereq­ui­site to making today’s deep tech investments capex- and opex-feasible: DCVC portfolio companies became the building blocks of AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Illumina, and VMWare. (And just last month, DCVC-backed Databricks announced the acquisition of DCVC-backed MosaicML for over a billion dollars in a resounding victory for accountable, explainable, high-quality generative AI.)” (1)

2023 DCVC Deep Tech Opportunities Report

The inaugural Deep Tech Opportunities Report features 96 pages of insights on human-centric robotics, machine vision, LLMs, water, elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, nuclear power, predictive drug development, and biological mimicry. [DVVC] also discuss three more focus areas we think will be trans­for­ma­tional:

• Carbon-intelligent materials,
• Space, and
• Cryp­tog­raphy for the real world. (2)

“This is a significant body of work that provides insights from DCVC into deep tech and how elements such as machine learning, LLMs, computer vision, and robotics will transform large industries and shape the future. It’s a great read…” said  Spencer Punter, Partner and COO at DCVC.

The firm provided an introduction to the report:

Introducing the DCVC Deep Tech Opportunities Report

“The inaugural edition[is organized] around three domains central to deep tech…:  

• Augmenting Human Abilities
• Climate Tech, and
• Compu­ta­tional Biology & Health.

Within each, we outlined three areas of innovation and entre­pre­neur­ship poised to have the biggest impact in the near future. For each domain, we also shared at least one doubt — a skeptical observation about a much-hyped technology that could turn out to be critical to humanity’s future, but which is probably not ready for venture-scale growth or investment.

The result is a 96-page report covering human-centric robotics, machine vision, large language models, water, the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of everything, nuclear power, predictive drug development, and biological mimicry. We also discuss three more focus areas we think will be trans­for­ma­tional: carbon-intelligent materials, space, and cryp­tog­raphy for the real world. 

The report is emphat­i­cally not an exhaustive survey of DCVC’s portfolio…Nor does it focus solely on our portfolio — we discuss many companies leading in their respective fields that aren’t backed by DCVC. For now, we invite you to download the report and read our thinking about the deep tech realms we consider most promising. (2)

What Next?

DCVC, the America’s Frontier Fund (AFF), Razor’s Edge Ventures, the US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT) and a16z are private sector organizations that form a VC community focused on National Security Investment and American competitiveness, a community of practitioners of which OODA LLC, OODA Ventures and OODA Loop are a part.

Activity is this space chystallized around the time of OODAcon 2022 in October of last year – and was the focus of a panel at our annual event:  Canceling the Apocalypse at OODAcon 2022: Funding the Next Generation of Innovation. DCVC and AFF joined us at OODAcon 2022 – and we hope they will join us again, as well all members of the broader NatSec investment community this October at OODAcon 2023.  

https://oodaloop.com/archive/2021/10/22/alan-cohen-of-dcvc-on-investing-in-deep-tech-for-humanity/

https://oodaloop.com/archive/2023/02/20/thomas-tull-chairs-the-5-billion-us-innovative-technology-fund-shield-ai-among-early-investments/

https://oodaloop.com/archive/2022/11/02/razors-edge-ventures-national-security-investment-and-the-future-of-american-competitiveness/

https://oodaloop.com/archive/2022/12/05/venture-capital-national-security-investment-for-american-competitiveness-new-mexicos-100m-pledge-to-affs-frontier-fund-i/