What is Deep Tech?

I found a good definition of "Deep Tech" by Abhijeet Patra, a former Deep Tech entrepreneur and venture fellow at Susa Ventures:

"The first requirement is that the technology is backed by a lot of research. Years of scientific or technological development form the basis and result in very long trajectories from early technology to market-ready product. Fundamental research, multiple design builds and iterative learning cycles for these new technologies takes a long time. If you add this up, you can already expect what technologies are known as Deep Tech: Nanotech, Quantum computing, Hardware platforms like drones, AR and VR, all kinds of sensors, Autonomous vehicles, Life-sciences, Advanced manufacturing, Spacetech, Energy generation storage, cutting edge Machine Learning etc."

But what is the difference between "technology" and "product"? I like the definition from Naval Ravikant about technology:

"By definition, technology is the set of things that don’t quite work yet. Startup businesses are trying to solve the things that are still broken, and so there is no single path to fixing them."

But once a technology works and demonstrates potential value, the new product development process can start and products with strong USP's and unfair advantages can be developed. Could it be that part of the reason why Tesla is so valuable, is because they are not only a product manufacturer (eg. Tesla Model 3) but also a holistic technology developer (eg. battery technology, AI chips, etc). Another example of Deep Tech is in the electric motor space, where new electric motor topologies such as axial flux are introduced into a market which has not seen a lot of innovation over the last 100 years.

To conclude with Deep Tech, we are not talking about a new product, but about new (potentially disruptive) technology that can lead into a multitude of new products that are specifically created for their particular market use cases. Or in other words; great technology (deep tech) is the strongest foundation for a disruptive product.