Australia is having a deep tech moment
Deep tech is about pioneering foundational tech to solve devilishly complicated problems. Australia has shown promise but needs to get better at converting knowhow to commercial success.
5G has not yet reached its potential, and Venkata Gutta thinks he can help. His Sydney-based Millibeam company is working on chipsets that seek to make 5G much faster and dramatically more efficient.
They are designed specifically for mmWave 5G. With its dazzling speeds — it can reach speeds 26 times faster than standard 5G — mmWave opens up new consumer and enterprise possibilities. The problem is it can currently only be transmitted over a few hundred metres. Millibeam’s optimised Farbeam processors are designed to change that.
It’s a plucky startup — that is, one shooting for ambitious goals despite being given limited ammo. It raised $750,000 in its seed round, and “a few million dollars” after that. Humble stuff for a company trying to reshape a technology that could be worth $7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. But the very fact that such an operation can exist in Australia is significant.
Australia for decades has been on the cutting edge of scientific research in many fields, having pioneered an eclectic range of tech from Wi-Fi to modern solar panels. Such advances are referred to as “deep tech” because of their foundational quality, as well as the enormous engineering and scientific knowledge required. Australia has an abundance of it, yet has struggled to convert such knowhow into successful companies.
