Published by Ever to Excel – Business Angel & Startup Consulting

Introduction

Deep tech – startups built on genuine scientific or engineering breakthroughs rather than software alone – requires long development timelines, significant capital and deep institutional expertise that most consumer-focused ecosystems struggle to support. Sweden has built a credible deep tech sector by leveraging its existing industrial heritage in mining, manufacturing and materials science. Australia possesses a remarkably similar industrial foundation, largely untapped for deep tech company creation.

How Sweden Converted Industrial Heritage into Deep Tech

Northvolt, before its well-documented financial difficulties, demonstrated how Sweden’s existing expertise in industrial manufacturing, engineering education and government willingness to co-invest in capital-intensive infrastructure could be redirected toward battery technology at genuine scale. Mining technology and automation companies emerging from Sweden’s long mining industry heritage show a similar pattern: existing industrial know-how, redirected toward new technological frontiers, rather than built from nothing.

Australia’s Underused Industrial Foundation

Australia has one of the world’s most sophisticated mining industries, deep expertise in resource extraction technology, and a strong research base in materials science and engineering through institutions like CSIRO. Yet Australia’s deep tech startup activity remains disproportionately small relative to this industrial foundation, with venture capital continuing to favour software and consumer technology, which require lower capital intensity and shorter paths to revenue.

Why Deep Tech Requires a Different Capital Model

Deep tech companies typically need patient capital willing to fund years of research and infrastructure development before meaningful revenue appears – a profile that does not fit neatly into typical venture capital fund timelines, which usually expect returns within seven to ten years. Sweden has addressed this partly through patient public co-investment and partly through corporate venture arms of established industrial companies willing to take a longer view.

What Australia Could Build

• Dedicated deep tech funds with longer investment horizons and mandates explicitly built for capital-intensive research commercialisation.
• Stronger bridges between CSIRO, university research and existing mining and resources companies willing to co-invest in spinouts from their own industry.
• Government co-investment vehicles explicitly modelled on the patient capital principles that supported Swedish deep tech, adapted for Australian regulatory and market conditions.

Conclusion

Australia is not lacking the raw industrial and scientific material for a genuine deep tech sector – it has one of the strongest resource and materials science bases in the world. What is missing is the patient capital model and cross-sector bridge-building that allowed Sweden to convert its industrial heritage into a globally competitive deep tech position. The foundation is there. The capital architecture has not yet caught up.

About Ever to Excel: We are a specialised business angel consultancy advising startups, investors and incubators across Sweden and Australia, with particular insight into deep tech and industrial innovation strategy. For more information, visit www.evertoexcel.biz