Deep Tech Briefing #41: 🛡️Anduril and OpenAI Partner, 🚗 EVs Ups and Downs, 🧪Advanced Materials for Defense, 🌾Mondelez Bets on Cocoa Tech, 🤖Robot for Automated Recycling, and More...

An insider’s update on Deep Tech Ventures: Your dose of tech innovations, startups, exponential industries, policies, and market moves to stay ahead and capitalize on it.

Welcome to issue #41 of Deep Tech Briefing, our Sunday column where we break down the week's standout developments in Deep Tech Startups and Venture Capital.

This Week’s Deep Tech Briefing: What’s Inside

• 🚗 EVs: A Green Transition, Market Struggles, and Geopolitical Shifts

• 🧪Advanced Materials: coated fiber, new carbon-removal material for data centers and sustainable construction

• 🌾 AgriFood: Mondelez Bets on Cocoa Tech, Solar Greenhouses, and Japan’s Agrifood Rise

• 🤖 Robotics: Automated Recycling Plants, Tackling Labor Shortages in Agriculture, and Robots Driving the Next Solar Farm Boom

• 🛡️Defense: OpenAI and Anduril Join Forces, Eastern Europe’s Dual-Use, AI Breakthroughs Shake Up the Week

• 🧠 AI: From Biden’s Grid Plan to Nvidia’s “Colosseum”

• 🛰️ Space: Asteroid Mining, Kinetic Launches, and the Race to Commercialize Space

✨ For more, see Membership | Partnership | Deep Tech Catalyst

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🚗 EVs: A Green Transition, Market Struggles, and Geopolitical Shifts

The electric vehicle (EV) industry stands at a pivotal crossroads, where the convergence of technological promise, market skepticism, and geopolitical shifts is reshaping its trajectory. Once heralded as the linchpin of the green transition, the sector now finds itself grappling with the sobering realities of maturing markets, investor disillusionment, and shifting political winds. As the narrative around EVs evolves, so too must our understanding of their prospects—not just as an investment opportunity but as a force capable of redefining industries, supply chains, and global economic strategies.

Recent bankruptcies among high-profile startups like Northvolt, Fisker, and Arrival are not mere isolated events but symptomatic of a broader reckoning. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis, nearly 75% of operational EV startups are hemorrhaging cash, with 13 projected to deplete their reserves by next summer. This attrition, while painful, could catalyze a Darwinian refinement of the sector, where only those with robust business models and technological defensibility endure. Yet, the numbers tell a sobering story: collapsing stock prices have erased billions in market value, and consumer demand for EVs, once a given, is now faltering.

Layered atop these challenges is the Donald Trump’s re-election. His administration’s promise to revoke the $7,500 EV tax credit, alongside proposed tariffs on imported auto components, threatens to disrupt domestic manufacturing and inflate already tight production costs.

Such policies could stymie innovation and investment in the U.S. market, accelerating the divergence between Western and Chinese players. China’s BYD and CATL have fortified their global dominance, leveraging economies of scale, vertically integrated supply chains, and a commanding share of global battery production. A U.S. retreat from clean energy would not only widen this gap but could cede the next century’s economic leverage to Chinese firms.

Amidst this turbulence, innovation remains the sector’s lodestar. Eecomobility’s battery-testing software, which promises to detect defects early, and Solidion’s graphene-based heat management technology, capable of ultra-fast charging in extreme temperatures, exemplify the ingenuity still propelling the industry. Such breakthroughs are not just incremental improvements—they address core barriers to EV adoption, including safety and convenience, and could recalibrate consumer expectations.

Kite Mobility’s shared EV hubs represent another frontier of innovation. By reimagining personal vehicle ownership, Kite proposes a more efficient, sustainable, and economically viable urban mobility model. Early adoption rates in Canadian pilot programs suggest that the appetite for such paradigms exists, particularly as urban centers grapple with congestion, housing density, and the mounting costs of parking infrastructure. For real estate developers, such solutions present a compelling alternative: why invest millions in parking structures when mobility hubs could serve residents’ needs more efficiently?

For investors, the opportunities lie in identifying these pivots. Redwood Materials, with its pioneering battery recycling operations, exemplifies how circular economies can mitigate raw material dependencies and unlock value in post-consumer supply chains. With revenues on track to hit $200 million this year, the company underscores the latent potential in sustainable, closed-loop systems—a priority as both consumers and regulators demand greener production methods.

The European Union’s €1 billion in subsidies for domestic battery production highlights another critical pivot: the reshoring of supply chains. By incentivizing local manufacturing and reducing dependence on Chinese imports, the EU signals a strategic commitment to securing its place in the EV value chain. Yet, the policy raises hard questions: can Europe scale production competitively against China’s entrenched cost advantages? And will this strategy foster innovation or merely protect incumbents?

The EV sector’s future is a study in contradictions: while the promise of green mobility remains compelling, the realities of capital-intensive scaling, geopolitical headwinds, and shifting consumer sentiment are testing the industry’s resolve. The path forward will require a recalibration of expectations and strategies.

🧪Advanced Materials: coated fiber, new carbon-removal material for data centers and sustainable construction

In the advanced materials sector, let’s talk about FibreCoat, the German startup that made headlines this week. Founded by a trio of engineers from RWTH Aachen University, FibreCoat has just secured €20 million in Series B funding to scale its game-changing coated fiber technology. This isn’t just another materials science company tinkering around the edges—it’s a firm redefining cost and performance benchmarks for critical industries like defense, space, and automotive. And the timing couldn’t be better.

FibreCoat’s breakthrough is deceptively simple: take a fiber, coat it with metal or plastic during the spinning process, and you’ve got a lightweight, conductive, and durable material that costs a fraction of existing alternatives. That’s a big deal when you’re talking about satellites and spacecraft, where every gram saved translates into real money. With space infrastructure projected to hit $1.8 trillion by 2035, according to the World Economic Forum, FibreCoat is perfectly positioned to ride that wave.

Credit: FibreCoat

The implications, however, go well beyond the space industry. The defense sector, expected to grow from $477 billion in 2020 to $600 billion by 2027, is hungry for materials capable of resisting electromagnetic interference and radiation without compromising mobility or reliability. FibreCoat’s technology checks all those boxes. On the automotive side, their fibers could enable everything from EV components to shielding for 5G infrastructure—another market poised for explosive growth.

That said,