REALTECH Conference wrap-up
what went down in London town, our 2024 edition summary
Last Friday we hosted 100 technologists building in our most critical industries. A joyous day, with a rare showing of afternoon sun looking over a resplendent London. The atmosphere was one of positivity and possibility – with many new connections, friendships and partnerships forged.
The day’s conversation veered from AI data centre build-outs, modernising defence procurement, bringing the tech sector closer to government, the Draghi report and how to extend Europe’s lead in climate and automation. This is a quick recap of some of the panels and presentations, all opinions are my own.
MODERNISING Europe’s defensive capabilities
Panelists: Matt Clifford (co-founder of EF), Eric Slesinger (Managing Partner at 201VC) and Kata Escott (Airbus Defence and Space), Moderator: Florian Doumenc (Trout Software)
Defence tech is having a moment. Buoyed by several success stories in the US and Europe, mounting geopolitical tensions and the sector’s transition from “taboo to consensus” amongst technologists. Interest amongst founders has increased notably. The panel discussed the difference between attitudes and incentives of existing military apparatus and the mindset of tech founders - the starkest being that the best technology is not pre-destined to win.
Some notable points were made; a) the core competency of a defence company is as much procurement as it is technology (eg the average time for a company to win a government contract is 6 years) b) the outcome for some defence tech companies in Europe is unclear, with EU market harmonisation required across procurement, investment and exit markets c) category winners in defence are built with procurement and lobbying chops from day 0 (see Anduril and Helsing).
Government’s role in industrial and tech policy
Panellists: Taavet Hinrikus (co-founder of Plural and Wise), Julia Willemyns (UKDayOne), James Wise (Partner at Balderton, UK Government’s Industrial Development Advisory Board), Moderator: Benedict Macon-Cooney (Tony Blair Institute)
As technology has gone from a niche to a horizontal theme with relevance in every sector, so have the incidences of technology bumping up against regulation and government. We brought different perspectives together from Julia, who leads UKDayOne a technology-focused political think tank, Taavet Hinrikus who was closely involved in Estonia’s govtech glow up and James Wise, VC and non-executive board member on the UK’s Industrial Development Advisory Board (IDAB).
The panel were clear that regulation was not going away and the increasingly important role of industrial policy (eg the US’ Inflation Reduction Act). They echoed something the REALTECH community has heard time and again. There is a communication gap between government and technologists. With both parties harbouring different incentives, motivations and lexicons. Few are willing to bridge this translational chasm (hats off to Matt Clifford, who is!). Maybe the Draghi report is the start of a rapprochement, no one is holding their breath. Panellists warned of the dangers of government-directed investing, versus creating an environment for entrepreneurship and industrial capacity to thrive.
(REAL)TECH Report
by Dealroom and Entropy Industrial Capital
Dealroom’s Orla Browne (pictured above) presented our co-authored research piece, which looks at key investment, company formation and growth trends in critical industries in Europe. The piece focused on energy, supply chain, robotics and defence.
A surprising takeaway from the report, was Europe’s comparative advantage in these sectors, both in terms of deployed technologies in climate and robotic automation, as well as a comparatively higher share of funding versus the US.
A sneak preview of the report is below, I’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks when we release the full report.
Future Four: startups worth knowing
A key focus of the conference is promoting exciting breakout deeptech startups. This year, we had some awesome founders presenting some impressive new technologies. A few common themes emerged from four presentations; bottlenecks and AI.
Fractile by Walter Goodwin, CEO – Walter gave a masterclass on the limitations of GPUs for AI inference. Fractile is an analog semiconductor company, focused on building inference 100x faster than GPUs
VSim by Michelle Lu, co-CEO – Michelle and her co-founder Kier Storey built Nvidia’s Isaac Gym and PhysX – simulation environments to replicate and test physical environments in-silico. VSim are collapsing training times for advanced simulations from weeks to hours, and increasing degrees of freedom for robotics, which promises numerous new use cases
ScopeAI by Jonathan Low, CEO – Jonny presented a compelling vision and counter-narrative to solving labour workforce shortages with AI. In Scope’s case, instead of replacing hard-to-find industrial inspectors, they’re enabling them with AI an co-pilot
Flink Robotics by Moritz Geilinger, CEO – Moritz spun Flink out of ETH Zurich’s Computational Robotics Lab. Flink uses advanced motion planning and differential simulation to make robots intelligent, enabling zero-shot capabilities in diverse environments, they are starting in warehouse automation
Are physical industries becoming software defined?
Panelists: Florian Doumenc (Trout Software), Ivan Jevremovic (Palantir), Moderator: Skye Fletcher (Dawn Capital)
Whilst the newsletter has been covering the software-defined (r)evolution for some time, we wanted to further explore its real-world impact with leaders from the frontline.
Our panellists were from different ends of the maturity scale, with Palantir being a leader in software-native industrial automation, they work with many large global enterprises. Trout is a newer entrant, who secures industrial assets using both hardware + software and work mainly with SMEs.
We are at a point, where many of the ingredients are there to apply software to physical industries. From cheap sensors, AI and the exogenous shock of Covid, a driving force for firms to modernise and fast.
The panel focused on manufacturing firms, as they are at the tip of the spear for this theme - manufacturing is the output of software-defined practices such as design, requirements and resource planning. With all technologies, willing customers and implementation remain the main drivers of uptake. A message reoccurred, software-defined industries are possible for enterprises who have a clear understanding of what they want to improve, and how software can improve the inputs to that process. We are right at the start of the broader physical market adopting software best practices.
RE-ENERGISE: re-building the electricity grid
Harvey Hodd (Rivan), Guy Newey (Energy Systems Catapult), Anastasios (SMPNet)
The rebuilding of the grid is as much a political and consumer issue as it is a technology problem. There is a clear mismatch in the allocation and development of renewable resources and a lack of innovation in grid technology. The IEA predicts that there will be 80 million kilometres of power lines that will need to be upgraded. We explored which new technologies were needed to manage a massive increase in power and 100,000s of new distributed and/or renewable assets.
I’m already looking forward to next year’s event, hope to see you there.