While many investors were prospecting elsewhere, deep (or emerging) technologies staked out territory as an established asset class—with the returns to match the best venture investments.
Deep technologies are the technologies of the future— the solutions to major global challenges, such as climate change, food shortages, and disease. As investments, they are not for the faint-hearted since they are almost always risky and typically require more capital and greater pa-tience than do other asset classes. But the markets that deep tech opens and the returns that startups realize can be huge.
For these reasons, over the past half decade, deep tech has become a mainstream funding destination for corporate, venture capital, sovereign wealth, and private equity inves-tors. Deep tech claims a stable 20% share of venture capi-tal funding, up from about 10% a decade ago. Multiple funding rounds and billion-dollar investments are com-monplace. Investors that do not understand the opportuni-ties, which are significant, and learn the ropes, which can be complex, are missing out on attractive returns and an excellent means of diversifying their portfolios.
BCG has been advising on, researching, and writing about deep tech for years. (See the sidebar “A Selection of BCG’s Thinking on Deep Tech.”) Here’s our guide for investors that are now looking into the field.