DCVC publishes the 2026 Deep Tech Oppor­tu­ni­ties report: ​“Back to Funda­men­tals in an Age of Exponential Change”

Geopo­lit­ical unrest; fragile supply chains; water shortages; aging and brittle infra­struc­ture; runaway healthcare costs; labor shortages in skilled technical roles; the scramble to find electricity for data centers; climate instability. When you add all these forces together, they make for a volatile economy where planning for the future is a challenge. But at DCVC, we’ve always believed that there’s one critical lever that can help bend cost curves downward, begin to restore predictability, and, as we like to say around here, ​“cancel the apocalypse.” That lever is fundamental deep tech innovation. 

And that’s why the theme of the 2026 Deep Tech Oppor­tu­ni­ties Report, which we released as part of SF Deep Tech Week, is ​“Back to Funda­men­tals in an Age of Exponential Change.” 

This is the fourth annual edition of the report — you can also download our 2023, 2024, and 2025 editions. It details our progress over the last year finding companies that are engineering solutions to trillion-dollar problems that older tech­nolo­gies haven’t fixed — especially solutions that pay for themselves rather than adding to ever-rising costs; that are relatively invariant to political and regulatory change and can therefore win on economics first; and that use advanced forms of computation to make natural or mechanical systems more program­mable and efficient. As always, we describe what new bets we’re placing on solutions like these, how old bets are paying off, and how we’re adapting our thinking in each of our areas of special­iza­tion (which include computing, quantum, energy, water, materials and manu­fac­turing, healthcare, drug discovery, agriculture, space, and defense).

Our energy and climate investments provide an encouraging example. Fervo Energy, which we’ve backed since 2022, raised $2.2 billion in an initial public offering on the Nasdaq exchange this spring. By applying cutting-edge drilling techniques from the oil and gas industry, real-time downhole sensor data relayed by fiber optic cables, and hands-on experience in the field, Fervo has been able to dramat­i­cally lower the time and cost required to drill new wells. The company is currently constructing 500 megawatts of firm clean power capacity — as much as a typical combined-cycle natural gas power plant — and over time its plan is to outcompete natural gas on a cost-per-megawatt basis.

Here are a few of the other high-level trends we write about in this year’s report; many of our investments respond directly to these realities:

→ In classical computing, there’s an urgent need for fundamental improve­ments in speed and efficiency at all levels, from chips to data centers to machine learning archi­tec­tures to physical AI.

→ In quantum computing, we are at the edge of perfecting new hardware modalities, error correction mechanisms, and sensing tech­nolo­gies that will make massive compu­ta­tional gains a reality for business and industry.

→ In the energy system, deep tech can limit the cost of growth, improve the resilience of communities and industries, and provide a way out of the dilemma posed by expo­nen­tially rising power demand.

→ In industry, we can achieve our rein­dus­tri­al­iza­tion, reshoring, and decar­boniza­tion goals if we find ways to rationalize logistics, build smarter factories, make low-carbon steel, cement, and fuels, and secure predictable, sovereign supplies of water and critical minerals.

→ In the life sciences and agriculture, we can speed up drug discovery, lower failure rates, reduce healthcare costs, cure more human diseases, and make food systems healthier and more efficient by introducing bigger and better compu­ta­tional models, trained on more high-quality data.

→ In defense, deep tech innovators can deploy new forms of autonomy to transform the battlefield and deploy coun­ter­mea­sures against hostile actors. 

The master trend at work is that better technology reduces risk and uncertainty and makes the world a more predictable place. And we believe the best place to look for fixes and improve­ments is deep inside a system rather than on its surface. Not just better software but more efficient chips. Not just clean, renewable energy but energy that’s so cheap that businesses must switch away from hydro­car­bons out of economic self-interest. Not just more drugs but drugs that are safer in a predictable way and developed at far lower cost and in less time. Those are the kinds of ideas venture-backed, computation-first deep tech companies can uniquely explore and exploit. We hope you’ll enjoy this year’s look at how our portfolio companies are doing this, and how we see them driving the evolution of their industries in the near future.

Download the 2026 Deep Tech Oppor­tu­ni­ties Report here.