Deeli AI: Revolutionizing Tech Scouting to Prevent Innovation Blind Spots
By turning the subjective art of technology scouting into a data-driven science, Deeli AI is empowering companies to make smarter, faster decisions about their future.
Although innovation is so critical to high-tech companies, ironically, pathfinding for emerging technology has mostly been manual. With roots in both the US and Taiwan, Deeli AI saw the gap and stepped forward to provide its solution.
Deeli AI, co-founded by Hanson Chou, a former MediaTek AI department technical director, and Abel Chen, an AI engineer and now Deeli CTO, emerged from this critical need. Their experience within MediaTek's AI department, specifically in the strategic technology planning function, revealed the inefficiencies of manual technology scouting. This process was characterized by subjective keyword searches, a fragmented approach, and the risk of overlooking new technologies, often resulting in competitors adopting crucial technologies earlier.
“To ensure the future 3-5 years of long-term success, companies have to do tons of academic searches, attend dozens of international technology symposia and all the top conferences every year, but without a good tool, people’s searches are limited to what they already know,” said Hanson Chou, founder and CEO of Deeli.
Companies hire PhDs who graduated from top universities to explore strategic technologies and maintain collaborations with research institutes, to identify cutting-edge technologies and future trends, spending millions of dollars a year just to avoid missing out on the latest technologies. However, they are still lacking a sound tool to provide objective analytics to aid decision-making. “If they fail to persuade the boss why invest in certain technology now, they often miss out on crucial emerging technologies, leading to significant market disadvantages,” said Chou.
To validate their technology, the Deeli AI team conducted a successful proof-of-concept (POC) back testing by retrospectively analyzing data related to an emerging semiconductor technology from two years before MediaTek's investment decision. Their AI algorithm successfully identified the technology's rapid growth potential and the existence of commercialized products from other industrial players and startups. This POC validated the potential for a more comprehensive and objective approach to technology assessment.
Deeli AI positions itself as a cost-efficient solution by streamlining the time-consuming and costly process of manual research and consolidating access to multiple databases. Its platform delivers valuable, AI-driven technology recommendations and assessments. The company has already attracted strong early interest, with over two dozen companies participating as beta partners and a major Taiwanese semiconductor foundry onboard as a paying customer.
Participation in the NVIDIA Inception Program allows Deeli AI to leverage NVIDIA's software resources and technical support to accelerate its development efficiency. As an AI company, they are also indirect users of NVIDIA's GPUs through cloud services like Google Cloud.
"Next-generation Gartner for Deep Tech"
Aiming to address the limitations of current market intelligence tools, such as AlphaSense and Gartner, Chou said Deeli AI aims to be the "next-generation Gartner for Deep Tech", with a vision that within five years, 25% of global R&D-focused companies across various sectors—including hardware, semiconductors, materials, and energy—will utilize the Deeli platform as a default tool for technology exploration and evaluation.
Deeli AI solves the fragmented and inefficient problems in the current technology search process. Technology strategists can directly search for keywords on the platform interface. The AI will integrate all relevant data, directly display the most popular and promising technologies in the field, and create growth curves. With daily updates, technology strategists can better track dynamics.
The company's deep technical expertise is a significant differentiator. Their core technology is built on Agentic AI, RAG, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and a proprietary "Knowledge Graph for Innovation". This graph meticulously tags and connects various textual data points related to innovation, application, innovators, and market technologies. When a client queries the platform, Deeli AI's intention engine analyzes the prompt, maps it to the knowledge graph, and generates highly precise and relevant responses.
Furthermore, Deeli AI is developing a "Hierarchical Technology Navigation" feature that maps the hierarchical relationships of technologies, from broad applications down to specific components and processes. This allows for dynamic connections across up to eight layers of technological depth, a capability that current large language models (LLMs) cannot achieve. This granular and contextually aware approach ensures that clients receive technology recommendations at the precise level of detail required for their specific industry and use case. Deeli AI directly benchmarks its performance against leading LLMs like GPT-4o, demonstrating superior results in terms of breadth and depth of technical analysis.
The company claims to be 20x faster at identifying new technologies, 40% more likely to discover hidden technologies, and an 18-month lead in forecasting technology developments.
Business Models
Deeli AI offers several business models to cater to different client needs:
Cloud-based annual subscription: This model is priced at approximately US$60,000 per year for three seats, targeting key personnel in innovation teams, pathfinding teams, and corporate development and venturing (CDC) teams within companies. These teams primarily focus on identifying new technologies, assessing potential acquisition targets, and making strategic investments.
Unlimited seat cloud-based option: A mid-tier offering at around US$150,000, providing unlimited seats and full features.
On-premise deployment: A higher-tier solution, costing around $300,000. This model involves deploying Deeli AI's solution directly on the client's internal servers, integrating with their internal technology roadmaps and project data. This allows for highly customized decision-making recommendations based on the company's internal resources and strengths. This option is particularly crucial for companies that prioritize data sensitivity.
A core aspect of Deeli AI's strategy involves proprietary data acquisition. They ingest data from academic papers, grants, patents, business reports, and product information, all focused on technological developments. A unique data source is their "Deeli Innovator" platform, which allows startups and innovators to submit their technology and product information, making it discoverable by Deeli AI's enterprise clients. This creates a two-sided marketplace, connecting early innovators with large corporations for potential licensing or acquisition opportunities. Deeli AI does not charge these data suppliers, instead focusing on revenue generation from the enterprise clients who utilize the platform for technology scouting.
Strong Team with Global Presence
Deeli AI's team comprises individuals with strong technical backgrounds, including PhDs, PhD candidates, and UC Berkeley Master's graduates. The 20+ team members are located in Taipei, Germany, New York, and the Bay Area in California.
The company has garnered significant international recognition, evidenced by its selection into the Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator program, where it was one of 20 global teams chosen from thousands of applicants, and the only Asian team. This recognition has aided in attracting top talent, with Deeli AI experiencing high application rates from American university students and researchers for their internship programs.
The company is actively seeking a COO and has attracted over 250 applicants, primarily from Silicon Valley. This demonstrates the disruptive and innovative perception of Deeli AI within the industry, attracting experienced professionals who see the potential to transform innovation processes.
To prepare for future growth, Deeli AI is about to start its Seed Round in the second half of the year. Chou disclosed that it has recently signed up a semiconductor company for on-premise deployment, and he needs to expand the team ASAP to meet the robust demand of customers.
By turning the subjective art of technology scouting into a data-driven science, Deeli AI is empowering companies to make smarter, faster decisions about their future. As they embark on their seed funding round, Deeli AI is not just raising capital; they are fueling a movement that promises to redefine how the world innovates, ensuring no breakthrough remains hidden and no opportunity is missed.
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