Frontier Tech Map 2021: The Top Israeli Deep Tech Companies of 2021
Grove Ventures and IVC proudly introduce the Frontier Tech Map 2021: 150+ Israeli deep-tech startups that will dominate the years to come. Our 2nd Frontier Tech Map is brought in a new, dynamic format, and is shared with top foreign venture capital funds, top Israeli VCs and multinational corporations.
In 2020, the world understood that Deep Tech is vital to solve our toughest global challenges. To deal with sudden disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, innovators had to think and act fast to bypass the constraints of our time. We sought out the most advanced technologies available to enable us continue commerce, educational, social, and health activities. For the first time in human history, we lived more in the digital plain than in the physical. Even a late-night snack became digitalized thanks to delivery services based on complex algorithms designed by the world’s brightest minds.
As Deep Tech is a relatively new term, that has only been around only for a couple of decades, its definition continues to evolve. While everyone in the venture capital industry agrees that it describes forward-thinking startups with technologies based on profound scientific breakthroughs or engineering novelties, not everyone agrees on which innovation categories should be included within this term. As we have mentioned last year when we first introduced the Israeli Frontier Tech Map, to simplify the inherent complication, we like to view Deep Technologies from two angles:
(1) Technologies that are on the interchange between fundamental research and applicable use cases. Tech innovations which require the development of non-trivial new intellectual properties; includes major scientific challenges; and caters to future customers’ market needs.
(2)Projects that only a limited number of teams around the world has the knowledge to tackle.Because the challenges sometimes require inventing completely new technologies, even with the best people on board, the usual deep tech startups’ life cycle is often lengthy.
Grove Ventures together with IVC Research Center, conducted a comprehensive research mapping more than 150 local startups which operate in the Deep Tech ecosystem. It is our pleasure to share with the world the 2021 edition of the Israeli Deep Tech landscape map.
According to our 2021 Israeli Deep Tech Startup Ecosystem, the most prominent deep tech fields in Israel this year include Semiconductors, AI,Space, Quantum Computing, Storage, Advanced Vision, Advanced Materials, Robotics, Communication, Sensors, Biotech, Healthtech, IoT and3D Printing.
CLICK ON THE LINK TO VIEW THE FULL ISRAELI DEEP TECH MAP: https://www.notion.so/groveventures/a3569ad28e894c43ae5361455292e89b?v=923490df37ca43afbb7217b932240f81
It was a big year for Deep Tech worldwide as new industries continued to discover the advantages of combining software and science to solve their most complicated challenges. Both in funding rounds and in M&As, the Deep Tech categories flourished, and in 2020 we’ve seen multiple Billion-dollar deals. Healthtech deals skyrocketed, like the notable 18.5B merger between Livongo and TeleDoc. In Semiconductors, we’ve seen major acquisitions of companies such as ARM, Xilinx and Maxim — $40M, $35B and $20.9B respectively (all of which, between July and September alone). In the Automotive sector, Zoox was acquired by Amazon for $1.2B in June.
Deep Tech continues to attract tech companies that want to transform how people and businesses operate. Grove Ventures and IVC identified 3 major Deep Tech trends in Israel for 2021:
1.Healthtech & Biotech — Forever Transformed —The Healthtech and Biotech categories showed dramatic growth in 2021, globally, as well as locally. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a dramatic push forward, and creative solutions were on high demand in innovation fields such as CRISPR technologies, robotics, medical devices, pharma, tests, mental health and others. In March, for instance, Israeli company Insightec, which develops and manufactures MR-guided Focused Ultrasound technology devices for image-guided acoustic surgery, raised one of the year’s biggest local rounds ($150M).
2.The Great Robotics Revolution —The shift towards robotics continues and many Israeli companies, including Trax, Airobotics, Intuition Robotics, Fabric, Temi, Xact Robotics — are taking part in this revolution. As social distancing became essential this year, countries looked for robots to replace humans in places like airports, commerce, and hospitals. The ways doctors perform surgeries, the ways warehouses deliver goods, the ways buildings are built and even the ways pizzas are being made, all will be dramatically changed in the very near future, partly, thanks to Israeli innovation.
3.New Space —While Elon Musk’s SpaceX got $1.9B funding in August this year in the US, Israel continued to establish its technological contributions to the ambitious space programs of the evolving world. In July, for example, Grove Ventures-backed company Ramon.Space’s computing equipment helped the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter to photograph the Sun from the closest distance ever. In November, it was declared that Eitan Steve, a former fighter pilot and businessman, will take part in a 2021 mission in Space, becoming the second Israeli ever to leave Earth. Supported by local organizations and governmental support such as of Keren Ramon and the Israel Space Agency, Israeli tech innovation has the potential to become even more dominant in this space.
From early-stage companies to well-funded unicorns, Israeli Tech companies continue to dominate many fields of Deep Tech innovation. AI, Cloud infrastructure, IoT and 5G become innovation enablers, and Israel’s high number of talents in both science and tech, as well as their passion towards solving complex challenges may bring a positive change to the world using Deep Technologies. As always, we are excited to see how Israeli Deep Tech innovation will profoundly affect the new technological breakthroughs of 2021.