Quehenberg

Engineer x Marketer | Into deep tech

🦾

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

Great tech ≠ great positioning.

Allonic has probably achieved one of the most exciting breakthroughs in robotic manufacturing technology.

They have machines that automatically "weave" complete robot hands/arms as a single structure instead of having to manufacture and assemble 40+ individual parts.

This could be transformative for humanoid robotics.
But their positioning and messaging makes it super difficult to know who should care and why.

Let's break down their positioning and see what we can learn from it:

Their homepage says: "Reimagining how robotics are made"

This is one of the main reasons breakthrough deep tech fails at GTM.

Nobody has a "reimagining" budget.

Everybody has a "solve my specific manufacturing bottleneck" budget.

Three positioning flaws I've noticed:

1) No specific customer:

"From idea to pilot in hours instead of weeks" → appeals to R&D teams optimizing iteration speed

"Build custom hardware with any team, not just specialists" → appeals to... non-technical teams?

(Also I ask myself... who designs robot mechanisms without specialists?)

"Make robotics for people possible: soft to the touch, reliable in action" → appeals to humanoid companies targeting safety-critical applications

"Create what you need, from simple parts to complex bodies — all in-house" → appeals to companies wanting vertical integration

These are up to four different buyers.
It is usually better to pic one.

2) Benefits are kinda vague:

"Hours instead of weeks" but compared to what?
CNC? 3D printing? Assembly?

Nobody knows if this solves their problem.

3) Invisible business model:

When looking at their website it wasn't immediately clear to me what they are selling.

Am I buying a manufacturing machine? A service? A license?

The economics change completely depending on the answer.

One option what they could say:

"Traditional robot hands need 47 parts and 6 weeks. We make them as one piece in 2 days."

Then prove it with numbers.
Make it falsifiable.

Honestly though the technology is just mind-blowing, and I'm still trying to get my head around what it makes possible.

Kudos to the incredibly smart people at Allonic!

If you're curious, check out their homepage:

https://t.co/GZPBQUnmdw

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

There are fewer quantum engineers on Earth than employees at one big company.

About 16,500 people worldwide build quantum computers right now.

The crazy thing is that the industry needs roughly 250,000 by 2030.

And there is barely anyone qualified to close it or in the pipeline to close it...

Going into quantum computing is probably one of the smartest career moves someone could do right now.

(of course if you are up for the challenge)

→ You can still be early to an entire industry. The people who learn this now become the senior names by the time it scales.

→ The pay already beats software. Senior engineers in Europe clear €100–150k, principals push past €200k, and the top of market goes higher. Jus because the supply of people who can do the work is that thin

→ You build the machine, and not another wrapper on top of someone else's. This has real impact. Everyone races to ship the next AI app but few thousand people are building the hardware the next era runs on.

I just checked my board:
- SCALINQ (Sweden)
- QC Design (Germany)
- Q*Bird (Netherlands)
- Quantum Motion (UK)

All hiring right now.

The field is small enough that one good engineer can have a big impact on society.

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

https://t.co/GOPjvmTNYI

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

Now companies can run their apps in orbit without launching a satellite.

Loft Orbital lets you build a containerized app, ship it to their satellites already in space, and run it on onboard GPUs.

They validate it for flight, deploy it to the runtime, and you task it via API through their mission-control software.

Vessel detection, wildfire tracking, RF intel, downlinked in to your PC in real time.

Now they need a Head of AI Engineering to lead it.

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

@itsolelehmann Much better use of AI than AI UGC videos😆

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

Paris just lost the #1 European tech hub spot to London in Dealroom's latest rankings.

But zoom into what's actually being built there in the deep tech space and the picture gets more interesting.

36 companies working on things like carbon nanotube quantum processors, in-vivo microbiome gene editing, portable MRI machines, and Europe's leading open-weight AI model.

- Mistral AI
- Alice & Bob
- C12 Quantum Electronics
- Chipiron, Cellectis
- Eligo Bioscience
- Forsee Power
- Arkeon Energy Systems
- Fluidion
- Arbiom
- BONE 3D
- Diodon Drone Technology
- Scaleway, BrainEver
- Prophesee, Advicenne
- AB Science
- Corteria Pharma
- Egle Therapeutics
- Enterome, Da Volterra
- Eco'Ring
- Evexta Bio
- CYCLAIR
- Diatos...

I found 95 open roles across the city. All on the map above.

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

Most countries have one deep tech they dominate:

US — frontier AI & compute
Taiwan — leading-edge chip fab
Netherlands — EUV lithography
Japan — robotics & chip materials
South Korea — memory chips
China — batteries & quantum comms
Germany — industrial automation
France — Nuclear energy
UK — AI research & genomics
Switzerland — precision engineering
Australia — silicon quantum
Denmark — wind energy
Finland — 6G
India — frugal space tech

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

https://t.co/4y59a8PZJD

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

I was just thinking about medical problems that don't get as much hype as longevity or curing cancer but would instantly make the founders billionaires.

Things like reversing myopia, regrowing retinas, or curing tinnitus.

Crazy complicated stuff with a massive TAM

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

@codyschneider @rileybrown Do you use it as your main model?

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

@SebJohnsonUK Such stories are just amazing!

Still it feels like most AI computing power is being used for TikTok UGCs😆

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

@codyschneider Man, that's nice.

But does it also work? Have you increased your traffic because of it?

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

@itsolelehmann This is also what the most advanced agencies do at the moment.

Scaling before AI = get more sales, hire more people
Scaling now = get more sales, use AI to work faster & more efficiently, hire only when limits are reached

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

Europe builds world class deep tech.

Then hides it so that nobody can find it.

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

@andreasklinger That's super cool. Really!

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

Imagine LLMs trained to sell products, ideas or ideologies

they arrive at the right moment, with the right POV, before you have even formed an opinion.

you would never feel it happen

this freaks me out

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

You go to Claude to plan a trip to china

you leave knowing you need speak chinese, your travel insurance is wrong, and you need 3 apps you've never heard of.

you came with just a question
you left with problems
and a shortlist

it was the best sales conversation ever

this acquisition channel will be so massive in the future

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

@XessiveObserver Thanks!

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

https://t.co/JxZeUYQRrk

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

@DomRocking_IT @itsolelehmann I have set it up like you suggested. Lets see how it works for me. Thanks for the tip!😎

[Quehenberg @Quehenberg_]

@DomRocking_IT @itsolelehmann But don't I use the benefit of learning through writing/creating the files myself and storing them in a logical way thar resembles a "mental castle". I kind know exactly where to find my notes amd whats in them..
Later my brain is able to connect all of it in unexpected ways😅