Time flies and it's already 2022. Happy New Year to one and all — slaves of the Gregorian calendar!
2021 provided blurry memories of endless Zoom meetings, vaccinations, PCR tests, face masks, the constant browsing of national guidelines on who can enter what country when and with which documentation (unless you're from a red-listed category 1 country outside of the EEC from where you were outright banned). Insightful questions such as what documents I would need for a 45-minute airport transfer in Zurich were abundant, as too was a general sense of doom and gloom (and more Zoom).
Then to top such ventures off, one would finally arrive at their destination, only to realize that no one's actually interested in my Covid passport or test results… The system works!
Kudos to everyone who kept nurturing, pushing, grinding, selling, and developing in times like this. Also kudos to everyone who felt overwhelmed and out of shape and/or without direction and/or meaning — these are perfectly normal reactions to times such as this…
For many of us, 2021 has been a year with many challenges. For myself, I have on the one hand been struggling with health, whilst on the other hand, found myself part of a great team getting the EIC Fund up and running. With up to EUR 10 billion under management, in our inaugural year, we invested over EUR 600 million in more than 150 European deep-tech companies. This interaction with the minds of great entrepreneurs and fellow investors has proven to be a great source of inspiration to my quarterly 73CH570RM Forecasts.
The 73CH570RM 2022 Winter Forecast
Zoom in on the Top 10 list, the best way to sound smart in your next meeting! Just casually drop a reference to an enabling technology, and your colleagues will frantically Google in the background...
As always, there are three parts to these forecasts:
The Top 10 list, what "everyone" in deep-tech is talking about at the moment. Lot's of subjective reasoning and FOMO here but a good conversation starter.
The 73CH570RM 42 grid showing what needs to be on the radar on the executive floor of all organizations.
The underlying 116 technologies when you want to go deep-down the deep-tech rabbit hole. If you’re curious, some more reading here.
There’s been quite a few changes to the Techstorm Forecast this time.
With all that's been happening in biotech (even before the pandemic but, of course, accelerated by it) genetic engineering is still #1. Artificial intelligence holds the #2 spot, much because we are finally seeing some interesting use cases as well as promising developments in NLP. Let’s just not debate the actual definition of AI. In reality, most AI implementation projects are still 90% data management and only 10% algorithm development. Also, there's been some much-needed work on the ethics of AI and data, and for an interesting AI counter-perspective, click here.
Blockchain is back on the list, fueled by the NFT and DAO craze. Also, with recent hardware releases of VR headsets and Apple's expected launch of their AR headset, the groundwork is finally being laid out for extended reality. This, of course, is further accelerated by the rise of the Metaverse and its embedding into wider culture. Sadly, one can expect companies flooded with Chief Metaverse Officers pontificating about the ‘limitless' nature of the future very soon.
5G is not losing momentum, it's simply that the trajectories of some of the newer entrants to the list are so strong it may seem so. Drones are (finally) back now that regulatory authorities have had their say, charged by more use cases emerging in both indoor security and warehouse inventory management.
New on the list is synthetic biology. By applying engineering principles to biology, it aims at the design and fabrication of biological components and systems that do not already exist in the natural world. This development spurs interesting research breakthroughs as well as growing investor interest.
The robotics industry is working hard to leave the factory floor where it's been dominating in the last several decades. Product lines are being canceled and new innovations in robotics are still challenged by the lack of relevant use cases. What is visible is the growth in specialized robotic systems where the path to customer acceptance is now much more clear.
A few things on my radar for 2022:
Energy in all its different forms ⚡️
The semiconductor shortage 💻
Globalization backlash 🌍
New brain interfaces 🧠
The Metaverse 👾
Longevity ⏳
China 🇨🇳
And oh my, aren't we getting closer and closer to the Tech Bubble bursting 💸
Stay curious and a bit skeptical!
... Nicklas
PS. Appreciate your comments, shares, re-tweets, and forwards.
One more thing...
The Matrix Resurrections, need I say more? Of course not better than the original from 1999, but no one expected that, right? If you’re interested in the philosophical perspective on The Matrix, read Nick Bostrom’s seminal paper on why we’re living in a simulation.
And on that note, let's hope we manage to get out of our own individual matrixes in 2022. See you on the flipside. ✌️