Week of May 09, 2023
Welcome back to the Critical Technologies Market Insider! In this issue, you will find:
- VCs/Accelerators investing in underserved companies for critical tech
- Market segmentation of mobility solutions market
- News stories curated by our team
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Commercial Investments in Underserved Companies for Critical Technologies
Based on capital market and government funding data we have compiled, below is a snapshot of VCs/Accelerators investing in underserved companies with solutions in critical technologies. By our account thus far, there are at least 1200 entities investing in underserved businesses in these 13 categories (either exclusively or representing a large proportion of their portfolios). The overall trend seems to be growing, while still far from what we would consider satisfactory to increase access to capital for underserved (rural, minority, emerging/small) companies.
Raj Sharma, our Founder, posted some additional commentary in his recent post.
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Case Study: Supercharging Spending and supply chain visibility
What do we buy when we say DATA SERVICES? How can we find and qualify the best emerging/underserved suppliers? The Army wanted to know.
As part of the strategic priorities of the CIO, the Army wanted to understand the requirements of the various funding offices across the Army. As an alternative to holding workshops and engaging all the various offices, the Army leveraged PSF’s AI-MI (AI for Market Intelligence) RequirementsMatch™ technology and analysis to, without doing any massive data call, to:
- Analyze thousands of solicitations and requirements documents
- Identify most highly recurring requirements
- Identify the funding offices and customers acquiring data services.
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Barriers to Entry and Commercialization in Government Market
Continuing our work of the past 5 years, we are excited to announce that we are expanding our initiative on Barriers to Entry in Government Markets to include barriers to commercialization. We are also excited to expand our collaboration to include faculty from North Carolina State University’s Supply Chain Resource Center, the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Center for Impact Sciences, as well as founder Shelly Kapoor Collins and the Shatter Foundation. We will also be announcing an Advisory Board to guide our work including several prominent leaders from academia, defense, fortune companies, and multi-lateral agencies (e.g. The World Bank, Silicon Valley Defense Group).
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WE’RE HERE TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND COMPLEX MARKETS, QUALIFY SUPPLIERS AND MANAGE SUPPLIER RISK
If you would like to put our comprehensive market, supply chain, demand and tech data on millions of suppliers and tech markets to work for you, please reach out to us at support@publicspendforum.net.
Or Visit our Offerings page to learn more.
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Top News Stories on Critical Technologies
DOD Increases Efforts to Bring Small Businesses Into Defense Industrial Base
Small business directors testified to the Senate about the decline in the number of small businesses in the defense industrial base, which poses economic and national security risks. The DOD highlighted programs aiming to strengthen small business supply chains, increase competition and attract new entrants, and provide knowledge and tools to protect critical assets in cyberspace.
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Roundtable with U.S. Battery and Critical Minerals Manufacturers
Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen Hicks met with executives from six U.S. lithium-ion battery and critical mineral companies to discuss growing the U.S. battery industry, reducing supply chain vulnerabilities, and supporting the U.S. industrial base. Challenges like the lack of battery standardization and varying demand signals were discussed, and possible solutions were proposed. The DoD is working with other government agencies to secure and expand U.S. battery supply chains.
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Advancing Artificial Intelligence Research Infrastructure through New NSF Investments
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a $16.1 million investment in shared research infrastructure to provide artificial intelligence researchers and students across the nation with access to transformative resources including data on human-machine interactions. The funding supports five collaborative projects aimed at democratizing access to research infrastructures and enhancing AI research infrastructure and instrumentation.
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DOE Announces $13 Million to Support Community Geothermal Heating and Cooling Solutions
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has selected 11 communities across 10 states for the first phase of a $13m initiative to design community geothermal heating and cooling systems. The use of clean geothermal energy for heating and cooling can help cities meet their energy needs, reduce costs, create jobs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The projects are part of President Biden’s Justice40 initiative, which aims to ensure that 40% of the benefits of certain federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities.
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EVs Rev Up Cybersecurity Challenges
The cybersecurity risks associated with the growing use of electric vehicles (EVs) and charging infrastructure could complicate efforts to prevent cyberattacks. A report from the IBM Institute for Business Value notes that EVs and their charging stations are in constant communication with each other, creating a “large attack surface” that could attract cyber criminals.
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Air Force Looks to Spend $500M on Quantum
The US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) is seeking quantum information science (QIS) solutions through a broad agency announcement (BAA). The AFRL’s information directorate is seeking white papers on five quantum research areas: quantum algorithms and computing; memory-node-based quantum networking; quantum information processing; heterogeneous quantum platforms; and quantum information sciences.
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Biden-Harris Administration Opens Applications for $848 Million in Competitive Grant Funding to Make Roads, Bridges, Transit, Rail, and Ports More Resilient to Climate Change
The Federal Highway Administration has opened the first round of the Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation Discretionary Grant Program. The $848m program is designed to reduce damage and disruption to the US surface transportation system and improve the safety of the travelling public, as well as to promote resilience to natural hazards and climate change impacts.
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DHS R&D Arm to Drive Climate Change Response under New Bill
The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is at the forefront of research and development efforts aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change, including emergency preparedness and disaster recovery. The DHS Climate Change Action Group coordinates action to improve resilience to climate change’s negative effects while focusing on shrinking the agency’s carbon footprint.
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XPRIZE Launches Competition to End Destructive Wildfires
XPRIZE has launched XPRIZE Wildfire, a global competition that will award $11 million in prize funding to teams able to develop and demonstrate fully-autonomous capabilities to detect and extinguish wildfires. The four-year competition will incentivize teams from around the world to innovate across a wide range of technologies in two complementary tracks designed to transform how fires are detected, managed, and fought.
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Public-Private Partnerships will be Key in National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization
The 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act, which established government funding for quantum information sciences research, is set to expire at the end of the fiscal year. Expanding partnerships between federal test beds and industry partners is a priority, along with adding more direction for funding intended for QIST research work done between government labs and industry or academic partners.
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WE’RE HERE TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND COMPLEX MARKETS, QUALIFY SUPPLIERS AND MANAGE SUPPLIER RISK
If you would like to put our comprehensive market, supply chain, demand and tech data on millions of suppliers and tech markets along with our expert advisory services/workshops to work for you, please reach out to us at support@publicspendforum.net.
We can help in three ways:
- AI-Assisted Market and Supplier/Supply Chain Intelligence Reports and Data through our AI-Assisted Market Intelligence (AIMI) offering. We use our comprehensive datasets, AI-MI technology assisted by our SMEs to create a custom market report and datasets that helps you understand market and tech trends, map out the ecosystem of small business, underserved and non-traditional and incumbents; qualify suppliers and assess supplier risk; map the R&D landscape and discover the venture capital and funding network.
- Market and Supply Chain Intelligence Advisory Services – We bring our decades of strategic market intelligence and supply chain expertise along with our powerful datasets and AI to help you develop plans to strengthen your supplier base, map out multi-tier supply chains, qualify and monitor suppliers and understand supply chain risk.
- Market and Supplier Intelligence Training and Workshops – Access the best faculty and practitioners such as Dr. Rob Handfield (NC State) in the world and get your team up to speed by learning the most cutting-edge methods for market and supplier intelligence
The key questions we help you answer:
- What are the emerging technology trends in a specific market? For example, we just analyzed markets such as batteries for aircraft, polymers and elastomers for in-space repair, and mobility solutions.
- Who are the participants in the ecosystem (R&D labs, venture capital, startups, underserved)?
- Who are the small and underserved companies in the market and what track record do they have?
- Where is there risk in our supply chain and how we can best manage it?
Subscribe to the Critical Tech Market Insider to get important market insights on critical tech markets and to become part of our 20,000+ community