A pilot programme to help promising deep tech ventures build up their businesses and go-to-market was launched on Tuesday (12 Sep 2023) through a S$75 million joint investment by Singapore’s Temasek, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and National University of Singapore (NUS).
The three organisations committed the funds over two years to accelerate the development, commercialisation, and eventual listing of successful deep tech startups from the pipeline of research projects at NTU and NUS.
The two universities will also develop a common licensing framework for intellectual property (IP), which will smoothen and speed up the process for spin-off companies to license university technologies. This usually takes up to five months, but will be cut to a month.
A memorandum of understanding was signed by Temasek, NTU and NUS at Temasek Shophouse on Tuesday (12 Sep 2023).
Temasek will invest S$65 million through Xora Innovation, while NUS and NTU will each put in S$5 million.
Xora is Temasek’s early-stage deep tech investing platform, and the S$65 million is part of the S$1 billion a year that Temasek had committed in October 2021 to pump into funding the development of deep tech innovation.
Mr Russell Tham, Temasek’s head of emerging technologies and joint head of the enterprise development group (Singapore), said deep tech involves using science-based principles from domains such as physics, chemistry, and biology to come up with a new invention or innovation.
He cited the examples of new material classes that can capture carbon better, or new chemistry processes that can turn iron ore to iron before it is made into steel.
The partnership between Temasek and the two universities will initially focus on building globally competitive ventures in three areas: energy transition, biotechnology, and the future of compute and cognition.
