Seven Trends That Defined the 2025 Tough Tech Summit

And yet Tough Tech continues to show real momentum. The rapid build out of AI data centers has fueled corporate demand for abundant, reliable, domestic sources of energy and building materials, as evidenced by partnerships between Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Google, Brimstone and Amazon, Sublime Systems and Microsoft. And the same advances in AI and automation are enabling Tough Tech companies to design, test, and build faster, as seen by companies like Cellino, Phare Bio, and Lila Sciences.

The Summit was filled with inspiring examples of the Tough Tech ecosystem’s resilience in meeting the moment to create real positive change. Below are some of the most important trends driving Tough Tech forward from the panels, pitches and keynotes at the Summit.

Strategic Partnerships Fuel Startup Growth By Creating Mutual Value

From the opening remarks to the closing sessions, the value of strategic partnerships for Tough Tech startups came up again and again. As the panelists explained in the morning panel on strategic partnerships, these relationships are fundamental from the very beginning for early-stage startups: they can provide valuable domain knowledge on the operational realities of their industry, and serve as early pilot customers that help startups generate valuable data that builds confidence with investors and future customers.

The panel’s lesson for early-stage founders looking to build strategic partnerships was clear: don’t start with what you need, start with what they need. By definition, Tough Tech promises to disrupt industries. By partnering with Tough Tech companies, industry leaders can fill their knowledge gaps on these technologies and retain their advantage, while the startup gets a fast-track to growth. It’s a win-win built on mutual value.

The best investors also act as partners to their startups. Beyond providing capital, investors come with decades of experience helping similar companies grow, and have a vested interest in helping portfolio companies succeed. They can provide valuable sector expertise and make introductions with other strategic partners. As one panelist put it, “equity is your currency,” inciting founders to make investors compete to provide the most value for that equity.

In both cases, panelists expounded on the importance of trust as the foundation for any successful partnerships. When it comes to both corporate partners and investors, complete transparency about technical demos as well as any doubts or bottlenecks helps to build confidence and head off the potential for crisis down the road.

AI & Automation Create New Opportunities for Tough Tech

Throughout the Summit, AI and machine learning was as pervasive in the discussion of Tough Tech as it is in conversations about the broader economy. As mentioned earlier, AI data centers are fueling demand for new energy sources and materials. But AI is also a driving force behind many of the technologies of companies pitching, presenting, and attending the Summit.

Regardless of where we are in the generative AI hype cycle, it was clear that AI has the potential to unlock enormous value — particularly in biotech, where the sheer complexity of biology defies human understanding. With the right training data, speakers extolled the potential for AI scientific agents to automate and accelerate the therapeutic discovery process from end-to-end. However, panelists agreed that a human in the loop would always be important for directing the outcomes of AI.

We’ve written extensively before about the advantages of AI-native startups, a point echoed by panelists. Being AI-native doesn’t just mean picking one or two high volume tasks to automate; to get the cumulative benefit of data integration, AI and automation needs to be pervasive throughout the R&D process. However, the change management challenge of integrating AI across the entire organization is one that companies are still learning how to navigate.

Tough Tech Adapts to Changing Federal Priorities

It’s no secret that the priorities of the current administration are dramatically different from those of the previous administration. Although federal funding cuts have tested the resilience of Tough Tech startups that lean on non-dilutive funding, the Summit revealed a remarkable ability for startups to adapt to the new reality.

For many, this means turning to the private markets for capital and strategic partnerships. Others are capitalizing on incentives at the state and local level. But there are still plenty of opportunities for funding at the federal level: multiple speakers noted their companies had benefited from incentives for geothermal and energy storage in the recent OBBB.

During the Biden years, many Tough Tech companies benefited from tax credits, grants and subsidies aimed at decarbonizing the economy. Many of these companies are now repositioning from enabling the energy transition to enabling energy dominance, economic growth, and American technological supremacy — all priorities of the Trump administration.

The truth is that even if people don’t believe climate change is a serious problem, everyone values cheap energy, resilient infrastructure, secure supply chains for critical minerals, and clean air for their children to breathe.

Economic Value Drives Sustainability

This new environment has foregrounded a principle that has always been the underlying reality for cleantech companies. As one panelist put it, reducing emissions can’t be the driving force of a Tough Tech company, but rather an emergent property of a company that delivers economic value to its customers in the form of lower costs and higher margins. “Reducing emissions doesn’t scale, but the global financial system does.”

Another panelist advised new founders: “you’re not just selling a product or technology, you are selling a financial vehicle for returns on investment.” Your customers and investors may share your sustainability goals, but ultimately they want to see how your technology will improve their bottom line and deliver financial returns.

It’s not enough to be more sustainable than the status quo, you have to be more efficient too.

Drop-in Solutions Give Cleantech Startups an Advantage Over Market Risk

In biotech, there will always be demand for new therapeutics; the greatest risk startups face is that their technology fails in clinical trials. While cleantech startups also face technical risk, their greatest risk is the lack of demand in the market. In most cases, their customers have invested millions in existing infrastructure and processes. The bar to replace these existing technologies will always be much higher than it is for therapeutics, where patients are always looking for the best treatment available for their condition.

It’s no surprise then that throughout the day, one phrase appeared over and over again in the pitches for cleantech startups: “drop-in solution.” This phrase reflects the reality that technologies that minimize behavioral changes and new infrastructure investments are at a substantial advantage over those that replace existing infrastructure and processes.

Startups Can and Should Take More Control of their Capital Stack

One of the biggest challenges facing a Tough Tech founder is financing their company. For scientist-entrepreneurs new to fundraising, it can be difficult to know when you’re being taken advantage of with unfavorable terms. However, the Summit revealed a trend of founders taking more control of fundraising, creating their own term sheets instead of waiting for investors.

One facet of this is startups going public before they have revenue. Many founders believe that they have to prove themselves before they can IPO. But one panelist advised founders to instead wait until they see their make-or-break moment on the horizon, for example a key clinical trial, and launch an IPO to raise all the capital they need to meet that moment in one go, thereby circling crossover investors with the fear of missing out completely on the opportunity.

New Solutions Expand the Possibilities for Tough Tech

The world’s first bionic nose for threat detection. Vaccine delivery through a transdermal patch. A fleet of autonomous sensors for continuous ocean monitoring. It was impossible to come away from the Summit without feeling a sense of awe at the breadth and ingenuity of the solutions emerging in the Tough Tech ecosystem. Throughout the day, 32 founders delivered rapid-fire pitches for their companies, with many already gaining real market traction

One noticeable trend was Tough Tech moving beyond terrestrial solutions, both into the ocean and into space. The New Space Economy session closed the Summit with an inspiring vision of a future Earth preserved as a garden for humanity, with heavy industry offloaded into space. It may sound like science fiction, but with SpaceX projected to deliver over 100 launches next year, transportation costs are falling to a price point on par with Fedex, and new modular space construction materials are laying the foundation for building and servicing scalable industrial production in space.

This futuristic vision was fitting close to a Summit that showcased the full scale of what’s possible when founders, investors, and corporate partners come together and dare to build a better future. In a year defined by uncertainty, the sustained momentum points to the resilience of the ecosystem and the inevitability of an economy transformed by Tough Tech.

The companies, researchers, investors and partners advancing Tough Tech are not waiting for certainty; they are building it — through collaboration, through persistence, and through shared purpose. Above all, the Summit demonstrated that when this community comes together, the path to a healthier, sustainable, and more prosperous planet doesn’t just become possible; it becomes unstoppable.