What does the future hold?
To observers in Silicon Valley, sometimes founder promises can verge into the world of make-believe, and the more advanced technology gets, the more a highly-valued company can sound like something out of science fiction.
That’s part of what inspired Bessemer partner David Cowan and his colleagues Tess Hatch, Chris Wan, and Bhavik Nagda along with nonprofit XPRIZE to create the XB100 list, which came out today. The list ranks a hundred private "deep tech" companies, which means they are companies that are commercializing scientific research. They divided the list into nine categories, with the largest being climate, agriculture, biotech, and robotics. “The public at large does care very much about the future of tech and what is coming down the road in terms of how our lives are going to change,” explained Cowan.
As excitement about generative A.I. makes companies like OpenAI household names, experts still emphasize we are in the early innings of A.I. and deep tech applications. The top of the list includes some familiar names: Elon Musk’s Space X is number one, followed by OpenAI, and Jeff Bezos's rocket manufacturing company Blue Origin. The list is not divided by stage, and while there are no seed companies, there are companies with a range of ages on the list.
To evaluate and rank these companies, the team created a formula based on four factors: valuation, commercial traction, impact on humanity, and scientific difficulty. Seven judges including CEO of XPRIZE Anousheh Ansari and former deputy administrator of NASA Lori Garver helped determine the company’s “impact on humanity.” Scientific difficulty was measured by the number of Ph.D.s and patents, while commercial traction was measured using NASA’s tech readiness level framework.
Cowan emphasized that the process for creating the list was independent from Bessemer’s investment portfolio. Five companies on the list are Bessemer portfolio companies, which are Sila Nanotechnologies, Xanadu, Boom, Forever Oceans, and DroneDeploy.
Cowan explained that the list is meant to help people understand the “black box” period between when academic findings are published in journals and when these deep tech companies go public and start reporting information about the company. “That middle area of company formation is a black box to almost everybody [from the outside],” he explained. He also noted the list should be helpful for investors looking to know who has Bessemer Venture Partners and XPRIZE's stamp of approval.
The road for many of these companies has certainly not been smooth, even with proprietary research advancements at the core of their business model. The A.I. chip producer Graphcore (No. 26), for example, lost its deal with Microsoft last year and saw some investors write down their stakes. Impossible Foods (No. 5) employees have seen their shares nosedive since 2021 as sales across the plant-based meat sector have fallen in past years. A spokesperson said that the ranking did take operating challenges into account.
What could be the best bet for the next household name? Cowan pointed to Boom, the Bessemer portfolio company that aims to cut air travel time in half. He also noted that the climate tech companies featured on the list were in the overall sector he was most excited about given the existential necessity for climate tech solutions.
“People at large want to understand, ‘Is it true that we could go to Mars? Is it true that we build personalized drugs? Is it true that A.I. can do my job?...We want to educate and inform the public about the future of technology,” said Cowan.
ICYMI: There’s been a flurry of news in the venture and dealmaking space over the past few days, so in case you missed it, here’s a quick roundup. —Anne Sraders
- Calpers plans multibillion-dollar push into venture capital—Financial Times
- US judge temporarily blocks Microsoft acquisition of Activision—Reuters
- TCV Raised 50% to 75% Less Than Planned For New Venture Fund—The Information
- Senate Opens Inquiry Into PGA Tour Deal with Saudi-Funded LIV Golf—New York Times
- Exclusive: SoftBank prepares new round of layoffs at Vision Fund—Reuters
- Bidders circle the remains of Goldman’s Main Street ambitions—Semafor
See you tomorrow,
Lucy Brewster
Twitter: @lucyrbrewster
Email: Lucille.brewster@fortune.com
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