💸Growth capital backs programmable biology and robotics; Series A dollars target AI power and data center hardware; seeds dominate in climate and industrial platforms | Deep Tech Capital Movements 45

This week Deals Sector Allocation — Energy 8; AI/Compute 6; Biotech/Health & Manufacturing 6; Semis/Quantum 5; Mobility & Materials & Space & AgTech 3; Cyber/Defense 2.

Welcome back to Deep Tech Capital Movements — A global read on where the money actually went in Deep Tech private markets.

Inside This Week’s Deep Tech Capital Movements:

Lite Edition

• This week at a glance

• Five Deals to Watch (why they matter)

• Capital Flows Snapshot

Full Edition

• Weekly analysis:

  • WEEK 47, 2025 - AI factories, programmable matter, and autonomy with a mission: power infrastructure, bio-based inputs, and robot brains that look like software

  • How Capital Actually Deployed This Week

  • Funds & Vehicles Check

  • Geography Check

  • Five Signals That Stood Out

• Full Tracking of 45 Deep Tech Startup Rounds

• Full Tracking of 7 Funds & Vehicles

---

This week at a glance:

• 52 items tracked: 45 startup/deal events + 7 funds/vehicles

• By sector (startups only): Energy & Climate (8); AI & Compute (6); Biotech & Health (6); Industrial & Manufacturing (6) and Cyber & Defense (2); Semis & Quantum (5) and Mobility & Logistics (3); Materials (3); Space & Aero (3); AgTech & Food Systems (3).

• By geography: North America (17) and Europe incl. UK (16) dominated; Asia (9), Middle East (2), Africa (1)

Five deals to Watch:

1. Flexion — $50M Series A (Switzerland).
   Flexion raised a $50 million Series A to build what is effectively a general-purpose “brain” for humanoid and human-capable robots, combining language-level reasoning, vision-language-action models, and whole-body motion control into a single autonomy stack that OEMs can license.

   Takeaway: Humanoids will not scale as a hardware-first game. Flexion is betting that the real control point is the software brain that can be dropped into many robot form factors, turning robot OEMs into distribution partners rather than full-stack competitors.

2. Nordic Salt Cycle — €3.5M Pre-seed (Denmark / Europe).
   Nordic Salt Cycle raised €3.5 million to commercialize molten-salt technology for recovering lithium and rare earths from end-of-life batteries, magnets, turbines, and electronics using modular, lower-capex units.

   Takeaway: Critical mineral recycling is being treated as sovereign industrial capacity, not a “green” side project. Molten-salt recovery that fits into existing industrial sites is a way to backstop EV, wind, and electronics supply chains without waiting for new mines.

3. Pegasus Materials — Expanded Seed (Netherlands / Europe).
   Pegasus Materials expanded its seed round to scale bio-based, high-performance polymers designed for electronics, data centers, and aerospace, including a high-heat polyamide and a polyimide for industrial 3D printing.

   Takeaway: Specialty polymers are turning into a strategic layer in the compute and aerospace stack. If Pegasus can match or exceed petro-based performance with bio-based inputs, it creates both ESG leverage and a differentiated European materials spine for high-value hardware.

4. Planet Smart — Pre-seed round (United Kingdom).
   Planet Smart raised an early-stage round to bring a biodegradable superabsorbent polymer into diapers and sanitary products, aiming to match conventional SAP performance while cutting microplastic leakage from disposable hygiene.

   Takeaway: Hygiene materials are a quiet but enormous microplastic vector. A drop-in, compostable SAP that can meet consumer-brand cost and performance constraints effectively turns regulatory and retailer pressure into a long-duration demand signal.

5. Profluent — $106M Series B (United States).
   Profluent closed a $106 million Series B to advance frontier AI models that design novel proteins and gene-editing systems, combining sequence and functional data to generate new enzymes and programmable genome editors.

   Takeaway: Protein and genome editor design is moving from artisanal R&D into a model-first industrial discipline. The leverage is not one therapeutic—it is a platform that can repeatedly generate high-value biological tools on demand for pharma and advanced therapeutics.

Capital Flows Snapshot:

• AI Infrastructure, Power & Data Centers.
  Capital treated AI facilities as grid-scale assets. Funding concentrated on control systems that raise utilization within fixed power envelopes, medium-voltage solid-state transformers that compress footprint and lead time, distributed compute fabrics that harvest idle capacity, and rack-level power and optical components. The underlying thesis: AI growth is now governed by coordinated electrons and bandwidth, not by model ambition.

• Semiconductors, Photonics & Yield.
  Investment in chips focused on retrofitting, not greenfield fabs. Photonic interposers, advanced etch processes, and micro-printing tools aim to lift density and yield while reusing 300 mm infrastructure, complemented by ultra-low-power sensing ICs and high-efficiency data-center power and interconnect components.

• Materials, Circularity & Water.
  Checks went into mineral recovery from end-of-life hardware, PGM-free catalysts based on abundant metals, and bio-based or biodegradable polymers positioned as drop-in replacements in electronics and hygiene. Subsea desalination units and fermentation-derived ingredients fit the same pattern: hardening supply by bringing critical inputs closer to demand and away from fragile chains.

• Programmable Biology & Digital Bioprocessing.
  Biology platforms were financed as production infrastructure. Model-driven protein and genome-editor design, bioprocess digital twins, flexible-feedstock synthetic fuels, secure environments for food R&D, and fermentation-based ingredients all point to a model-plus-lab architecture designed to deliver repeated asset generation and predictable scale-up.

• Defense, Autonomy & Space.
  Defense and space funding targeted enduring capabilities: orbital servicing, small launch and propulsion, general-purpose robotic intelligence, vehicle autonomy, and integrated unmanned systems for defense and logistics. Parallel allocations to cyber digital twins, machine-driven trading, and on-chain execution infrastructure extend that autonomy lens into security and capital markets, backed by dedicated defense-tech capital in Europe.

• Agents, Workflows & Real-Economy Systems.
  Capital in applied AI focused on where cash actually moves: call handling, distribution quoting and collections, equipment rentals, construction procurement, and farmer input and output markets. Industrial sensing models and design copilots for manufacturing and aerospace share the same logic—embed AI into orders, inventory, and asset operation to expand margins and reduce working-capital drag.

Upgrade to Full Edition

Get the weekly deep tech capital analysis + full round tracker (every startup, stage, region, sector) + funds & vehicles (who’s writing the checks).

WEEK 47, 2025

AI factories, programmable matter, and autonomy with a mission: power infrastructure, bio-based inputs, and robot brains that look like software

Capital concentrated in three places: