A short-form recap of SoCal Deep Tech Week 2025 — the numbers, the rooms, the moments that mattered, and the quiet conversations that ended up shaping the 2026 program.
Founders, funders, operators, and program officers registered across the week's events.
Flagship summits, forums, founder dinners, and corridor sessions.
Presenting, corporate, capital, and ecosystem partners on the roster.
A standing-room-only main stage. The audience question that ran 22 minutes longer than the booked time set the tone for the rest of the Week.
Twenty-two GPs in a single small room with eight founders. Two of the term sheets that came out of it are now portfolio companies.
Three primes opened their floors on the same day for the first time. The cohort that walked it ended up forming the 2026 manufacturing track.
DIU, ONR, AFRL, and DARPA at one table answering questions for two hours. The kind of access most founders don't get in a year.
A private dinner that became the genesis of the 2026 Long Beach concept brief — the room we're now building the next edition around.
Closing reception on the promenade. Open by application, and the unofficial start of the 2026 cohort building list.
The single best room in deep tech this year — closer to a working session than a conference.
I closed two introductions in the first three hours that would have taken me six months to get otherwise.
Weekly registrationsFounders, funders, operators & program officers
Capital in the roomAcross private capital & industry
Senior executivesMilken Institute, Intel, Saab, Lockheed, NASA JPL, Northrop, Boeing, Rockwell, NVIDIA
Investment firmsUp Partners, Lux, 8VC, Type One, a16z, 3M Ventures, Moonshots, Harpoon, Fulcrum, Booz Allen Ventures
Dual-use & deep-tech firmsField AI, Firestorm, GrayMatter, JetZero, Machina, Isembard, Freeform
Ecosystem partnersDIU, Marine Innovation Unit, US Space Force, US Navy, City of El Segundo, City of Long Beach
Across the series · 2024 & 2025 combined
Programs
Speakers
46 on stage across three summits — leaders from Rockwell Automation, Intel, NASA JPL, Idaho National Lab, Oklo, DIU, Saab, General Atomics, Fenwick, HSBC, the Milken & Hudson Institutes, and founders from Picogrid, Firestorm, SeaSats, Greymatter, Cambium, Machina, Isembard & NORAMARK.
Measurable Impact
An emerging manager raised a $10M fund off connections made during the week.
A founder raised ~$3M and secured three Adaptive & Intelligent STTRs.
Several growth-stage companies made new hires sourced from the cohort.
Programs
Speakers
26 speakers & judges across three programs — including AWS, NVIDIA, Lux Capital, MaC Venture Capital, Up Partners, Starburst, the Defense Innovation Unit, True Anomaly, Field AI, Miso Robotics, USC & the US Space Force.
The full Edition 002 recap memo — partner list, coverage log, post-event survey, and the moments we kept coming back to — is publishing soon. Available to credentialed press, partners, and 2026 applicants on request.