Deep Tech has always been a core part of venture investing. Steven Jacobs Partner & CPO, Lakestar Deep Tech, or Frontier Tech, is fundamentally new science and engineering making its way into companies and products for the 昀椀rst time. Historically, we can think of Edison commer- cializing the light bulb with GE, Carl Benz building the 昀椀rst car at Mercedes-Benz, or Steve Jobs at Apple launching Lisa, the 昀椀rst computer that used a graphical user interface. These Deep Tech founders created some of the largest companies in history, many of which have become core platforms and critical infra- structure for societies today. In 2023, as highlighted in the Eu- rope DeepTech report, the frontier has shifted, and DeepTech- start-ups are tackling new challenges. Novel Energy such as fusion and new battery chemistries, access to space and the deployment of new astral infrastructure, new breakthroughs in AI and computational biology, and computing technologies in- cluding photonics, decentralized networks, and quantum. These companies stand to become the next giants, but to get there, they will need to overcome large gaps in growth stage funding, the urgent need for dispersed European talent to aggregate in dense hubs, and intense competition from the US and China. Europe has more AI talent than US The fact that AI is 昀氀ourishing under the radar in Europe should not be a surprise. Europe has a strong technical talent pool, owing its strength to world-class scienti昀椀c and technical institutions and the depth of its engi- neering talent. This strength extends into the 昀椀eld of AI. Over the past decade, Europe has not only witnessed a greater than 10x increase in the number of people working in AI roles, but also claims a larger resident population of high- ly-skilled AI professionals compared to the US. Of course, many of these AI professionals are working in roles at US-headquartered technology companies that have built a large AI research presence in Europe, such as Alphabet or Meta. But as Mistral AI - a company founded by European former leading AI researchers at Meta and DeepMind - demonstrates, these Europe- an-based pools of AI talent have become an incredibly rich breeding ground for the founders and talent behind the next generation of European AI companies. 139 | Companies