SOSV Deep Tech 100

SOSV Deep Tech 100

We are pleased to present SOSV’s first annual Deep Tech 100, a list of our portfolio startups on course to bend the arc of human and planetary health. We selected the 100 from our 800+ company portfolio based on three criteria:

• Built on “deep tech,” by which we mean science and technology on the frontiers of human knowledge, across everything from therapeutics, precision fermentation, and microbiome engineering to AI, quantum sensors and cold fusion.
• Raised at least a series seed but not more than series C.
• Focused on “human and planetary health,” the core mission at SOSV.

The companies on the Deep Tech 100 cross dozens of technology and market categories, which reflects SOSV’s conviction that existential challenges to our climate and health will eventually demand that we reinvent our means of production across most every sphere of life. Much of the science and technology we need exists already, but commercial markets are slow to catch up, and therein lies the vast opportunity. SOSV’s goal is to find founders who are steeped in promising new technologies and driven to disrupt markets — all for the betterment of human and planetary health.

“Our goal is to back founders ready to harness the great human health and decarbonization megatrends of our times,” says Sean O‘Sullivan, SOSV’s founder and managing director. “The many technologies emerging across every discipline in science and technology present countless amazing opportunities, but it takes a lot of help and capital to turn what’s possible into a commercial success. SOSV sows those first seeds with brilliant deep tech founders and sticks with them through the long journey.”

Our goal is to back founders ready to harness the great human health and decarbonization megatrends of our times.

Sean O‘Sullivan

SOSV’s Founder and Managing Director

Nothing consumes the SOSV team like the global effort to find the brightest, most promising founders. We read thousands of applications each year, and review at least as many referrals from SOSV’s vast network. Only a teeny percentage join the approximately sixty companies each year who receive SOSV’s pre-seed investment (up to $550K) and join one of our deep tech development programs. SOSV continues to invest in those companies as they raise seed and later rounds. 

Our Deep Tech 100 are strong fund raisers; in total they have raised almost $2.0 billion, with some firms at barely $1M and only two over $100M. The Deep Tech 100 aggregate valuation, admittedly a fickle index of success, is $5.0 billion as of September 2025.

SOSV’s global reach and the quality of the founders comes through in the data. The startups are based in 14 countries: 65 in the United States, 9 in the United Kingdom, 7 in Singapore, 7 in Canada, 2 in Germany, 2 in Austria, and 1 each in Australia, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. At the same time, 62% of the Deep Tech 100 companies have at least one PhD on the founding team, and 39% have at least one female founder.

It’s important to note that the Deep Tech 100 replaces two SOSV portfolio company lists – the Climate Tech 100 and the Human Health 100, which we last published in 2024. We made the change because distinctions between health and climate can be elusive when founders pivot from one category to another in order to find the best application for their technology. We thought investors might value a more “technology-first” list of our best companies, which is what we created with the Deep Tech 100 below. The list is easy to filter based on the broad categories decarb, automation and health, as well as by technologies such as precision fermentation and AI, or by markets such as agriculture and energy.

Across the Deep Tech 100, 44 companies deploy some form of AI that is fundamental to their product, not writing memos or digesting scientific papers. Those applications range from discovery of  new drug candidates, to computer vision in robotics and manufacturing, to post-operative infection monitoring, to disease detection in sewage. Another dozen companies reported that they were currently experimenting with AI in their product tech stack because, fundamentally, any company using data for discovery or analysis, will soon deploy some form of AI, if they have not already.

While we had the attention of our Deep Tech 100 founders, we also asked how the Trump administration’s trade and budget policies have affected their outlook. The common thread was that they were facing a lot of “uncertainty” and the only option for founders, as one noted, was “to remain agile, informed, and resilient in the face of change.” That’s what we love about our founders.

They persist. (More below the 100 list.)