🧱Hydrogen Steel & EACs; ⚛️ Nuclear Tranches for Data Centers; ✈️ Solid-State Cells Eye Aviation; 🚛 Gen-AI Freight Autonomy; 🚀 Reusable Rocket Push & more | Deep Tech Briefing #94

Weekly Intelligence on Deep Tech Startups and Venture Capital.

Jan 18, 2026

∙ Paid

This week, the stack runs from 750 MW of wafer-scale AI compute and zero-water heat plants, through sodium-ion and biochar-glass storage, down to microbes squeezing more copper from rock and new ammonia routes for fertilizer and fuel. On top of that, SAFE defense loans, chip onshoring, and quantum alliances show how policy is hard-wiring national strategies into your deal flow.

Deep Tech Briefing Stack:

Interesting Reading – our collection of readings that are worth sitting with.
The Big Idea – a critical inflection, unpacked into a strategic view.
Deep Tech Key Moves – field intelligence on this week’s most important moves.
Signal in the Data – the one chart that should change how you see deep tech this week.
Deep Tech Power Play – where regulation, incentives, and influence redraw the opportunity set in deep tech.

🔶 Interesting Reading

The world’s great climate collapse Axios — Climate ambition’s fall from grace: Trump pulling the U.S. out of the 30-year-old global climate treaty, Carney and Blair rowing back, Gates pivoting, climate VC down ~50% from 2021 even as nuclear and AI-driven power demand surge—essential context if your decarbonisation thesis assumes a smooth, policy-led glide path.

China may crack down on “Singapore-washed” tech companies Axios — Meta’s $2.5B buy of Manus AI becomes a test case for Chinese regulators, and for the whole strategy of re-domiciling sensitive AI companies to Singapore and the Caymans—useful lens on how export controls, outbound-investment rules and home-country leverage may reshape cross-border AI M&A.
Greenland, Rare Earths, and Arctic Security CSIS — Greenland’s vast rare-earth deposits, Chinese incumbency, brutal Arctic logistics and community politics all colliding around a single mine—good case study in what “minerals security” and friend-shoring actually look like when you move from strategy decks to permafrost.
Pentagon Falls Behind on Mapping Quantum Technology to Military Needs The Quantum Insider— An Inspector General finds the DoD hasn’t updated its list of quantum-relevant military problems in years, leaving startups selling into a fog of misaligned timelines and fragmented demand—sobering read if your quantum thesis leans heavily on near-term defense revenues.
Nuclear startups are back in vogue with small reactors, and big challenges TechCrunch — $1.1B poured into nuclear startups in the last weeks of 2025 alone on the promise of factory-built small reactors—set against a hollowed-out supply chain and thin manufacturing talent base—useful reality check on how much of the “new nuclear” story is capital versus actual industrial muscle.
U.S. Venture-Capital Fundraising Falls 35% as Firms Stay Private Longer The Wall Street Journal — Fundraising drops to $66B in 2025, 70% below the 2022 peak, with capital concentrating in a handful of mega-firms while emerging managers struggle—important backdrop for anyone wondering why their favorite specialist deep-tech fund feels capital-constrained even as AI mega-rounds keep getting done.
Companies turn to agrivoltaics to differentiate their products PV Magazine USA — From sheep under panels to specialty crops and pollinator habitat, agrivoltaics is becoming a go-to way for module makers, developers and tracker vendors to stand out in a commoditising solar market—worth a look if you’re hunting for defensible wedges in the PV value chain.
Agriculture Executives Move AI Into Farming’s Economic Core PYMNTS — From CES 2026, a useful snapshot of how John Deere, Heritable Agriculture and Enko are pushing AI upstream from “smart tractors” into seeds, chemistry and field-level digital twins—turning agronomy into a software-defined, model-driven system on razor-thin margins, and hinting at where defensible data moats and value capture might actually sit in the next wave of agtech
Why Rivian Is a Better Bet Than Tesla Right Now The Information — Rivian framed as the EV pure-play actually focused on selling trucks and SUVs today—pushing toward a ~$45k mass-market model and localized manufacturing—while Tesla chases robots and robotaxis; a neat illustration of how markets may re-rate “AI platform optionality” versus execution in heavy industry.
Another wave of neoclouds as AI data center cooling heats up The Information — A tour through the neocloud stack—alternative cloud providers plus power and cooling specialists raising serious capital off the back of AI infra demand—good map of where infra-heavy, less-obvious AI trades (thermal management, grid-adjacent real estate, bespoke clouds) are starting to look like venture, not just project finance.
Qualcomm Ventures: now is the right time to invest in Indian deep tech Global Corporate Venturing — Qualcomm’s India team on why the country’s deep-tech moment is finally here: the $1B India Deep Tech Investment Alliance, a ~$12B government R&D push and founders shifting from consumer apps to chips, space, robotics and quantum—useful template for what a maturing deep-tech ecosystem looks like outside the usual U.S./Europe hubs.

🔸 The Big Idea

Beyond ESG: Green Steel as Market Infrastructure

A next-generation steel plant ties its non-prime hydrogen-based output to a long-term European offtake agreement.

In 2026, European steel is no longer just an “old economy” story. It is one of the main testing grounds for how a mature industrial continent can upgrade heavy assets under carbon constraints without sacrificing competitiveness. Steel still accounts for around 5–6% of EU CO2 emissions, with roughly 126 million tonnes of output and ~183 million tonnes of CO2 in 2023, but it also underpins automotive, construction, machinery and countless export value chains.

Within this landscape, northern Sweden has become a kind of living lab. A new greenfield steel plant there is being built around a fully integrated hydrogen-based route: more than 700 MW of electrolysers, fed by renewable electricity, will produce hydrogen to reduce iron ore, with downstream processing targeting up to 5 million tonnes of steel per year by 2030.

Initial phases are sized around 2–2.5 million tonnes, ramping to that 5 Mt level. Emissions reductions versus a traditional blast furnace route are projected in the 90–95% range. This is a multi-billion-euro asset, not a demonstration plant, and it lives or dies on its ability to secure predictable, paying demand.

The news this week is that the plant has signed a multi-year offtake agreement for non-prime steel with a major European processing and service center. From 2027 onward, the buyer is set to take “high six-digit” annual tonnages of non-prime coils – material that doesn’t meet the tightest specifications but remains strong and fully usable for many industrial applications. The offtake will supply customers across several European sectors and represents the plant’s first announced customer specifically for non-prime output, complementing earlier deals focused on prime green steel.

One notable aspect is that