🪨 Clean Iron at Scale;💰State as Shareholder; ⚡Compute Chases Megawatts; 🛰️Laser Crosslinks Go Live; ✈️AI-First Airframes & more…| Deep Tech Briefing #84

Weekly Intelligence on Deep Tech Private Markets.

Welcome back to Deep Tech Briefing — the weekly space by The Scenarionist where we analyze and discuss the key events of the week shaping Deep Tech Private Markets.

In Today’s Briefing:

Lite Edition (Free)

• Roundup

• Interesting Reading

Full Edition (Premium)

• The Big Idea:

  Washington Wants a Piece of Quantum: VCs just got a new “co-investor”: the U.S. government.

• The Key Updates:

  From an AI-flown fighter jet and a startup hypersonic weapon headed for service, to a New Hampshire rare-earths refinery, a Canadian clean-hydrogen plant, sodium-ion batteries onshore, nuclear baseload for AI workloads, and a UAE protein megaproject—and much more.

• Signal in the Data:

  The Machine–Labor Crossover

  2025–2030 task mix tilts from “human-only” to hybrid, rewiring industrial alpha

• Deep Tech Power Play:

  From rare earths to palm oil to planning approvals — the U.S., EU, and U.K. are turning minerals, forests, and algorithms into strategic infrastructure.

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Roundup

Dear Friends, welcome back to Deep Tech Briefing!

Public support is moving beyond grants and tax credits toward direct equity stakes in companies tied to compute, energy, and advanced manufacturing. That matters because an equity holder is not just a funder; it is a co-owner with long-term objectives such as secure supply, onshore capacity, and compliance with export controls.

This sits inside a broader reindustrialization cycle. Compute growth is now limited by physical bottlenecks: dependable electricity, high-capacity grid connections, cooling, and fast data movement. Plans that pair today’s thermal generation with a path to small modular reactors later this decade are gaining momentum because they offer firm power under one accountable operator in the same regions where data centers and factories are being built.

Defense and space are maturing into steady procurement categories. The focus has shifted from prototypes to production: airborne systems designed for autonomy from the start, hypersonic platforms moving toward integration with existing launch infrastructure, and small satellites using laser crosslinks to move data to the ground in seconds. The common denominator is repeatable delivery at scale.

Materials and energy infrastructure moved in parallel. Allied rare-earth refining, lower-temperature electrochemical ironmaking, commercial clean hydrogen output, and sodium-based stationary storage are advancing in ways that reduce exposure to overseas choke points. In heating and cooling, geothermal is being offered through long-term service agreements that turn what used to be a high up-front retrofit into a predictable monthly cost.

Against that backdrop, the week delivered concrete industrial milestones. An AI-flown combat aircraft was introduced with no cockpit, prioritizing manufacturability, survivability, and software-driven operations. A new high-speed strike system progressed toward service adoption, with an explicit goal of building inventory rather than staging demos. A major aerospace incumbent backed a compact high-performance engine meant to compress intercontinental flight times.

Control of critical subsystems is tightening. Intellectual property from a failed electric airframe program has been pulled into a U.S. platform with a clearer certification path. A drone maker internalized its autonomy stack to remove a key supplier dependency. A defense platform brought infrared sensing capacity in-house to secure a core element of targeting and surveillance hardware.

In orbit, commercial space is being treated as an operational layer, not a research exercise. Small satellite constellations are adopting high-rate laser links to cut latency. A geospatial provider converted sensing into a recurring maritime-intelligence service. A privately funded space-based missile-defense demonstration advanced without waiting for a traditional prime, pointing to faster design-to-orbit cycles.

Onshore inputs continued to harden. A New England facility began producing rare-earth materials at commercial scale. Low-temperature ironmaking moved forward with offtake from major industrial buyers. A commercial electrolyzer in British Columbia is supplying hydrogen daily to transport and industrial customers. Sodium-ion systems began shipping for grid and data center backup, offering an alternative to lithium and cobalt, and at the utility scale, baseload developers are combining current generation assets with a defined path to modular nuclear in high-load regions.

You’re reading the Lite edition of Deep Tech Briefing. For a full view of the week’s key developments across new breakthroughs, permits, industrial partnerships, IPO signals, and policy shifts shaping the deep tech landscape, unlock the full version here.

Enjoy the read!

- Giulia

✨ For more, see Membership | VC Guides | Insights | Rumors | Exit

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🔶 Interesting Reading:

• The Iron Bubble: why defense tech might not be overhyped PitchBook News — Defense-tech dealflow and valuations are ripping, but this might be less bubble, more industrial base reboot. Rearmament, AI-driven modernization, and governments finally acting like anchor customers = actual demand, not just “guns-and-hype.”

• Corporate VC co-investments show patterns of trust and influence Global Venturing — Cisco, Samsung and Deutsche Telekom keep showing up in the same frontier rounds. Repeated syndicates are telling you who’s trusted to open doors, shape roadmaps, and help you actually ship.

• Canada tells pension funds to invest at home in age of ‘economic nationalism’ Financial Times — Ottawa is nudging its C$3tn pension giants to steer more money onshore and raise ~C$500bn for growth. Industrial strategy via asset allocation instead of just subsidies—template for mid-size economies?

• Deals for startups reach record in Japan before listing curbs Bloomberg — Tokyo’s about to squeeze tiny IPOs, so founders are exiting via M&A instead. Japan logged 199 startup buyouts this year—over 2× four years ago—as trade sales beat “micro-cap tourism” on the public markets.

• Sen. Curtis, Energy Secretary Wright on why it’s time to make nuclear energy “sexy again” KSL.com — From Utah’s Conservative Climate Summit: next-gen reactors pitched as safer, smaller, cheaper—and essential if the U.S. wants AI-era baseload and to not get outpaced by China.

• Europe Venture Fund Lakestar Calls Halt on New Startup Bets Forbes — Lakestar hits pause on raising fresh LP money and spins up a €250M “resilience” vehicle, leaning on its own capital and defense/sovereignty bets like Helsing. European VC is drifting toward national capability finance.

• Farm robotics in the weeds as funding declines 36% from Q2 to Q3 AgFunderNews — Ag robotics is “mission critical” for labor and input pressure, but funding still fell ~36% quarter-on-quarter. Demand is obvious, capital suddenly isn’t.

• US army taps private equity groups to help fund $150bn revamp Financial Times — The Army says it needs ~$150bn to modernize depots, rare earths, compute-heavy infrastructure—and only has ~$15bn budgeted. So it’s openly courting Apollo, Carlyle, KKR, Cerberus. Wall Street is being treated like a defense prime now.

• Trump administration mulls additional $12B clean energy funding cut Reuters — After canceling $7.6B across 300+ DOE awards (hydrogen hubs, grid upgrades, EV, DAC, batteries), the administration is eyeing another ~$12B in cuts. Climate infra builders now have to hard-price D.C. policy risk.

• GM raises outlook as strong truck sales dull pain of tariffs Crain’s Detroit Business — Pickup demand + tariff relief let GM lift its 2025 profit target to ~$13B and pop the stock ~10%. Meanwhile EV rollout slows, GM eats a $1.6B charge, and “all electric by 2035” quietly becomes “not so fast.”

• A New Generation of Industries Emerges in Texas From Federal Push for Mining Revival Inside Climate News— East Texas is drilling again, but for lithium and critical minerals. Washington wants domestic feedstocks for batteries, chips, missiles, solar, wind—the whole advanced manufacturing stack. Gulf Coast as America’s battery belt?

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🔶 The Big Idea:

Washington Wants a Piece of Quantum.

VCs just got a new “co-investor”: the U.S. government.