Deep Tech and Technological Sovereignty
En the era of Deep Tech, the boundary between basic science and the market has blurred in order to address humanity’s most complex challenges. In Spain, multiple stakeholders are working to move beyond a passive role and become an active player in the global technological revolution.
What is Deep Tech and why is it an opportunity for Spain?
Deep Tech technologies are characterised by high scientific and technical complexity, significant risk, and long development cycles, with a structural impact on industry and value chains. They emerge from frontier scientific advances, such as quantum technologies, photonics, nanotechnology, or synthetic biology and are key to Europe’s strategic autonomy and competitiveness, as they are explicitly oriented toward delivering disruptive market impact.
Their development is closely linked to research and technology centres, and market entry typically occurs through spin-offs. These technologies require sustained, large-scale investment in talent, infrastructure, and industrialisation, making a long-term national strategy, coordinated with European and regional levels, essential to ensure coherent and continuous support policies.
Spain plans to launch its first National Deep Tech Strategy this year, led by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. This roadmap is vital for several strategic reasons:
1. Bridging the research-to-market gap
Spain has long faced a paradox: it ranks 9th globally in scientific output, yet 28th in innovation. This strategy aims to transform academic papers into real economic impact by activating technology-transfer mechanisms that ensure knowledge does not remain confined to libraries, laboratories, or research centres, but instead generates value and growth.
2. Financial strength and a mature ecosystem
The plan includes an initial €353 million fund (from CDTI and Innvierte, together with the European Investment Bank) to support industrial scale-up. The ecosystem is no longer anecdotal: by 2025, 1,007 active spin-offs were recorded, generating €1.4 billion in revenue and more than 13,400 high-skilled jobs.
3. Sovereignty and autonomy
In a context of global uncertainty, possessing domestic capabilities in critical technologies such as nuclear fusion (with unique infrastructure in Granada) or supercomputing (with MareNostrum 5 at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, among the world’s ten most powerful systems) is a matter of economic and political survival.
This is reinforced by advances in photonic semiconductors, with initiatives such as the future SPARC Foundry plant in Vigo, an infrastructure unique in Europe that is attracting international talent and laying the foundations for a high value-added industrial ecosystem. Such capabilities strengthen strategic autonomy by ensuring that key technologies are designed, developed, and manufactured in Europe, reducing external dependencies and enhancing industrial resilience.
Deep Tech at the global level: Europe as an ethical and specialised model
Globally, Deep Tech already accounts for 44% of European technology investment. While the United States and Asia, led by China, have traditionally dominated the innovation narrative through large foundation models and mass production, Europe has opted for a model based on specialisation and ethics.
Although Spain’s potential is embedded within the broader European roadmap, the national Deep Tech landscape competes strongly in specific niches. For example, 19.8% of Spanish Deep Tech spin-offs operate in biotechnology, which has become the sector’s leading domain, followed by energy technologies at 16.7%.
Spain has also successfully territorialised its talent: Catalonia and Madrid lead in health and biotechnology, the Basque Country stands out in energy and Industry 4.0, and Galicia is positioning itself in coastal resilience technologies. This diversity allows Spain to avoid dependence on a single sector and builds a level of resilience that economies reliant on a single digital platform do not possess.
