Deep Tech Monthly in Review – May 2025

Field Notes from The Scenarionist. A Strategic Recap for Builders and Backers

What We Saw This Month – May 2025

Dear Friends,

If May taught us anything, it’s that deep tech is no longer a promise. It’s a system.
And like any complex system, it’s shifting—slowly, structurally, and out of the spotlight.

Across climate, defense, AI infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing, we watched the market reorganize around friction. Not the hype kind—but the physical, industrial, and geopolitical kind. Billions of dollars moved through fusion, orbital autonomy, green steel, and critical materials. But the real shift wasn’t about the capital—it was about what the capital is now willing to fund.

Venture is returning to physical systems. To assets with inertia, timelines, and teeth.
What once looked uninvestable—military hardware, modular reactors, off-Earth logistics—is now being viewed as a national imperative, a sovereign edge, or an industrial moat.

In defense, we didn’t just see startups. We saw new doctrines. A $2B valuation without public contracts? That’s not a funding story—that’s a positioning play inside tomorrow’s defense stack. Autonomy isn’t just software anymore; it’s payloads, interop, timelines.

In climate, we didn’t just see hope—we saw bottlenecks. Climeworks’ challenges reminded us that climate infrastructure isn’t about ambition, but coordination. Meanwhile, green steel, latent heat storage, and H₂-based fertilizers are showing signs of technical discipline and capital timing finally aligning.

In AI, the most interesting shifts weren’t in models—they were in memory.
Networking. Optical interconnects. The hardware substrate of intelligence itself. What we learned this month is that compute alone won’t scale the future. Bandwidth will. Thermal limits will. And founders who understand systems—not just chips—will build the real moats.

And through it all, the subtext stayed the same:
Less pitch. More production.
Less “what could this be,” more “how will this run.”

The visionaries are still here—but the builders are winning. And the most strategic founders are not chasing hype—they're aligning with policy, infrastructure, and capability gaps.

In May, we curated and published 18 original pieces of intelligence, insights, and educational playbooks—spanning first-hand operator interviews, capital analysis, and strategy deep dives. From AI hardware orchestration to green steel scaling, our aim wasn’t to comment—it was to equip builders with the tools to navigate and deploy in real time.

5 Key Takeaways from our May pieces

1. Venture Is Rediscovering Industrial Friction.

Across sectors, we saw capital gravitate not toward speed or scalability, but toward friction — the kind that comes with regulatory drag, capex intensity, and supply chain inertia. From green steel to fusion, funds didn’t chase simplicity; they underwrote difficulty. The most investable companies in May weren’t the fastest — they were the most operationally grounded.

2. Strategic Autonomy Is Becoming a Market Signal.

Defense tech wasn’t just about hardware this month — it was about positioning. The rise of European and American dual-use unicorns suggests that national interest is reshaping dealflow. Founders that anchor their tech within sovereignty narratives — autonomy, energy resilience, rare earths — are receiving funding not despite their geopolitical complexity, but because of it.

3. Climate Tech Is Entering Its Operational Era.

May marked a transition in climate capital: from promise to production. Climeworks' challenges highlighted the limits of vision without infrastructure. Meanwhile, upstream bets on thermal storage, lignin-based materials, and hydrogen agri-inputs revealed a growing investor preference for climate solutions that map cleanly onto supply chains, policy incentives, and hard engineering milestones.

4. Deep Tech Execution Is Now a Discipline — Not a Vibe.

The best-funded founders in May weren’t necessarily the boldest — they were the most fluent in how things actually get built. Across medtech, advanced materials, and AI-native systems, what stood out wasn’t narrative, but specificity: integration models, reimbursement logic, pilot throughput, and stack interdependencies. Execution isn’t just admired — it’s capitalized.

5. Infrastructure Is the New Stack.

AI hardware stories like Atlas and lab-to-cloud startups showed that innovation is shifting from algorithms to substrates. Founders building tools that underpin compute, fabrication, or deployment logistics are commanding premium attention — not because they’re sexy, but because they’re system-critical. In deep tech today, what you enable often matters more than what you build.

The 3 Macro Trends That Defined May

1. Industrial Risk Is Emerging as a Strategic Asset
   May confirmed what some have quietly anticipated: friction is no longer a red flag — it’s investable.
   From autonomous mining systems to grid-compatible fusion hardware, capital is flowing toward domains with high inertia, baked-in regulation, and complexity that’s difficult to replicate.
   → A mid-stage fusion company didn’t raise on scientific promise alone — it raised on regulatory readiness and deployment alignment.

2. Negotiation Is Shaped by Asymmetry, Not Valuation
   The most telling rounds this month weren’t won on pricing power. They were shaped by informational advantage.
   Deep tech still moves through mismatches — in knowledge, in timeframes, in expectations. Founders who navigate those mismatches aren’t just defending terms — they’re defining them.
   → One materials startup set investor expectations around throughput KPIs and locked-in supply chain access — not vision slides.

3. Operating Models Are the New Narrative
   The most compelling raises weren’t built on ambition — but precision.
   Founders who understand their technical dependencies, scaling friction, and integration realities are closing rounds with speed — and trust.
   → A compute infrastructure team secured funding not on theoretical promise, but on a clear grasp of thermal, bandwidth, and orchestration constraints.

May Recap: 18 Assets to Power Your Deep Tech Advantage

Strategy playbooks, investor intelligence, and operator insights — built for execution.

The Scenarionist exists to equip deep tech founders, investors, and operators with high-signal tools. Every week, we publish sharp, actionable content designed to help you navigate capital cycles, technical inflection points, and industrial-scale deployment.

In May, we released 18 original pieces across 5 strategic streams:

• Deep Tech Briefing

• Deep Tech Catalyst

• Deep Tech Capital Movements

• Insights & Playbooks

• VC Guides

Missed May? Here’s the full collection of everything we published — every insight, briefing, and playbook, right at your fingertips.

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✨ INSIGHTS & PLAYBOOKS

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✨ VC GUIDES

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✨ DEEP TECH BRIEFING

Deep Tech Briefing #59

🛡️$2B Defense Unicorn; ⛏️MiningTech Acquisition; 🌱Farming in Orbit; 🪨 Membranes for Rare Earth Extraction; 🚤 Maritime Hardware in 100 Days & more

Key Lessons:

1. Valuation ≠ revenue. In defense, architectural relevance can define unicorn status.

2. Mining automation is now acquirable. M&A appetite is moving upstream.

3. Orbital ag isn’t science fiction—it’s supply chain insulation.

Deep Tech Briefing #60

🪨 Rush into Trash-to-Minerals;🛡️New EU Defense Unicorn; 🌖 Lunar Mining Milestone; 🛰️ Japanese Satellite IPO; ⚛️ Google Bets on Early-Stage Nuclear Sites & More

Key Lessons:

1. Waste valorization is being priced like infrastructure—permits matter more than patents.

2. Lunar assets are entering sovereign strategy decks—watch for policy-tied capital.

3. Early-stage nuclear is being judged on siting logic, not tech readiness

Deep Tech Briefing #61

🌊AI-“Ocean Drone” ;💨Climeworks Setback; 🇪🇺EIB Billions for Strategic Autonomy; 🧬Genetic Testing M&A; 🥤PepsiCo partner to H2-based fertilisers

Key Lessons:

1. Edge-AI is real—deployment-ready autonomy is maritime-first.

2. Climate infra can’t scale without policy-aligned procurement.

3. Europe is deploying capital upstream—owning inputs, not just outcomes.

Deep Tech Briefing #62

⛏️ Mining Goes Autonomous; 🌾 Crop Logic Scales; 🛰️ Orbital Logistics Rise; 🛡️Tactical Autonomy Scales; 🧠 AI Faces the Grid & More

Key Lessons:

1. Mining autonomy is now an operating model, not a demo.

2. Tactical autonomy depends on interop and latency, not model size.

3. Compute scale is now limited by thermals and throughput—not innovation pace.

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✨DEEP TECH CATALYST

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✨ CAPITAL MOVEMENTS

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The Layer That Compounds

We’re entering a phase where execution beats speculation.
If you're building or backing deep tech, knowing what’s being funded — and why — is no longer optional.
It’s operational.

Every week, we publish deep tech intelligence across capital, climate, AI infrastructure, autonomy, materials, and manufacturing.

Some of it — like our Deep Tech Catalyst strategy series — stays open by design.
It’s our contribution to founders and teams navigating the first transitions from breakthrough science to market readiness.

Other pieces — like Deep Tech Capital Movements — are available to all subscribers for their first 7 days. These updates are built for timing — but their value deepens over time.
After that window, they move into our Premium Archive: a curated, searchable body of investor behavior, capital signals, and strategic patterns. Context doesn’t expire there. It compounds.

And then there’s the rest:
Our Insights, Tactical Resources, Operator Breakdowns, Capital Strategy, Negotiation Frameworks, and Founder Playbooks — the material designed not just to inform, but to support real-world execution.

That’s what lives inside Scenarionist Premium:
A system. A reference layer. A second tier of signal — built for those making decisions within complexity.

Premium members get:

🌟 Weekly: 1 Premium Insight + 1 Tactical Resource — strategy built from execution
📘 Full access to the DeepTech Venture Playbook Library — GTM models, LOIs, integration paths, manufacturing logic
🗂 A growing Archive of every premium piece we’ve published — all indexed, contextual, and built to compound

If you’re already reading us, you’ve likely felt the difference in approach.
Premium is simply the rest of it — and the part that lasts.

Or start free — and upgrade when ready!

The surface keeps you informed.
The second layer lets you execute.

What Our Analysis Revealed — Beyond the Headlines

The headlines this month captured the movement. But the real signal was deeper: not momentum, but structural realignment. Here’s what our May analysis surfaced—beneath the noise, behind the term sheets.

• Defense is becoming infrastructure — and Europe knows it.
  CHAOS Industries’ $2B valuation wasn’t about revenue, but architecture. And players like EDF and Weir are proving that Europe’s industrial posture is becoming upstream, asset-backed, and sovereign by design.

• AI isn’t just scaling — it’s embedding.
  Ocean drones. Photonic links. Site-native intelligence. It’s no longer about model performance — it’s about deployment geometry and thermal constraints.

• Industrial energy is crystallizing around heat.
  Molten salt reactors. Latent heat buffers. Forget solar panels — decarbonization is shifting toward dispatchable infrastructure.

• The frontier of value is the edge.
  From compute to logistics, the edge is no longer a side case — it’s where orchestration meets margin. And where abstraction fails.

• The bottleneck isn’t capital — it’s system readiness.
  Climeworks and Statkraft reminded us: climate tech doesn’t lack funding. It lacks absorption capacity. The capital is there. The permitting isn’t.

• Hardware is back — where interface is leverage.
  This cycle’s winners aren’t shipping volume. They’re owning integration: chip-to-memory, sensor-to-decision, infrastructure-to-impact.

• The VC playbook is fragmenting.
  Strategic capital is skipping stages. Deployment trumps pitch. Relevance beats traction. And founders who align with capability gaps get funded — fast.

• Exits are arriving earlier — by design.
  Micromine, MGA Thermal, Atomos: they didn’t need unicorn status. They owned critical stack positions — and integration value moves faster than valuation multiples.

• Narrative fit is the new filter.
  Great tech isn’t enough. If your story doesn’t map to procurement logic or sovereign priorities, the term sheet won’t land. Clarity beats ambition.

• Execution has a new definition.
  It’s not MVPs. It’s: Does the system run? Can it fail over? Will it ship? Founders who answer those questions upfront are closing rounds without friction.

Opportunities & Challenges That Surfaced

🟢 Three Emerging Opportunities

1. Bio-Industrial Platforms Are Gaining Strategic Weight
   Startups embedding bio-based materials, diagnostics, or chemistry into existing industrial workflows are no longer seen as vertical niche plays — they’re being valued as infrastructure. The advantage now lies in enabling translation, not invention.

2. Mining Tech Is Turning into a Full-Stack Opportunity
   Autonomy in extraction, AI-native logistics, and edge orchestration are converging fast. Founders who can integrate these layers — from subsurface intelligence to real-time routing — are attracting both financial capital and industrial partnerships.

3. Strategic M&A Is Being Driven by Unlikely Players
   From consumer goods giants to telecom operators, new categories of buyers are entering the deep tech acquisition landscape. Startups that align early with these unconventional partners can exit faster — often without hitting traditional valuation milestones.

🔴 Three Persistent Challenges

1. Mismatched Negotiation Still Stalls High-Potential Rounds
   Too many founders enter funding conversations without clear stakeholder maps, crisp KPIs, or strong alternatives. The result? Dilution, delays, or deadlock. Negotiation isn’t just about valuation — it’s about asymmetry and preparedness.

2. Permitting and Procurement Block Even Bankable Tech
   Great engineering means little without the right policy scaffolding. Regulatory lag, unclear procurement channels, and jurisdictional friction continue to stall deployment — especially in climate and energy infrastructure.

3. Edge Deployment Still Lacks Standard Playbooks
   From remote robotics to orbital servicing, edge-native systems are moving fast — but investor frameworks aren’t keeping up. Without common architectural references, these bets remain harder to price, scale, or de-risk.

Wrapping May

If you’ve made it this far, you already know what we’re building.
The Scenarionist is an operating layer — for founders navigating complex stacks, for investors betting on friction, and for teams building where infrastructure, capital, and systems collide.

What we track each week isn’t momentum.
It’s signal.

And signal compounds.

As we always say:

The Scenarionist — Built for the Builders and Backers of real Deep Tech Ventures.
We exist to sharpen your edge. Because when you win, we win — and progress does too. 🚀

— Giulia Spano, PhD & Nicola Marchese, MD

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Disclaimer

Please be aware: this is not investment advice! The information provided in this publication is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Furthermore, the author assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the presentation. While the author makes every effort to provide accurate and complete information, they make no representations or warranties, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, or reliability of the information contained herein for any purpose. If external partnerships are featured, they will be introduced with 'Brought to you by' for transparency. The technologies and companies mentioned are not part of our investments, nor do they pay us for promotional purposes. References, when listed, are listed in alphabetical order.