– Hello Tomorrow launches the Global Deep Tech Pioneers Radar, built on over a decade of Hello Tomorrow Challenge data, tracking most promising early-stage deep tech ventures years before they surface in markets or capital flows.

– The 2026 Radar reveals global, regional, and per capita rankings of deep tech startup-producing countries, with the United States, France, and the United Kingdom among the Leaders.

– The latest cohort of the Hello Tomorrow Challenge unveils 950 Deep Tech Pioneers from 108 countries as the most promising deep tech ventures of 2026, including 35% university spin-offs.

PARIS, 11 MARCH 2026 –  Hello Tomorrow, world’s largest deep tech community, today releases its 2026 Global Deep Tech Pioneers Radar, ranking the top 100 countries producing science-based startups, with a forward view of where the most promising deep tech ventures are being built today. 

The 2026 Radar is built exclusively on Hello Tomorrow Challenge data: a decade of cohort-level assessments of thousands of science-based startups, evaluated annually by expert juries of industry specialists, investors, and corporate innovation leaders. The Challenge alumni (Deep Tech Pioneers) have gone on to raise over $25 billion collectively, in many cases years before attracting institutional capital or public attention — among them, co-founder of 2019 track winner Pasqal, Prof. Alain Aspect, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022.

“Today, deep tech is central to national sovereignty and corporate competitiveness, yet most tracking tools arrive too late,” said Arnaud de la Tour, CEO and co-founder of Hello Tomorrow. “The signals we are seeing in 2026 tell two stories: which countries are emerging as the next deep tech powerhouses, and which technologies are closest to reshaping core industries. Both should matter to anyone building strategy around where transformative technology will come from next.”

Built on a Decade of Data: The 2026 Top 100 Country Rankings

The Radar is powered by longitudinal data from the Hello Tomorrow Challenge, with thousands of startups evaluated every year since 2014 by expert juries against four criteria: technological innovation, economic viability, impact, and team strength.

Past Deep Tech Pioneers identified through the Hello Tomorrow Challenge have raised over $25 billion, with prominent examples including:

–Pasqal (2019 Advanced Computing Track Winner): building quantum processors out of arrays of atoms, raised over $300M to date.

–Robeauté (2024 Digital Health & Medical Devices Track Winner): developing therapeutic rice-grain-sized microrobots to deliver treatment to hard-to-access areas of the brain, raised €28M.

–ToZero (2024 Grand Winner): building Europe’s leading lithium-ion battery recycling plant to recover critical materials and enable a circular battery economy, raised €17M to date.

The 2026 Radar draws on this unparalleled dataset, scoring ecosystems based on the number of startups selected as Deep Tech Pioneers and their progression to Finalist and Winner status across successive cohorts, and maps 100 ecosystems from the global Hello Tomorrow network across five tiers spanning every region of the globe.

A Cross-Continental Top 10

The top 10 spans continents, with North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia all represented. The United States leads, setting the score benchmark at 100.0 points, followed by France (97.0), the United Kingdom (93.5), Germany (92.0), Israel (85.8), the Netherlands (85.7), Switzerland (85.2), India (83.7), Spain (83.6), and Canada (82.3).

Seven of these ten countries have each produced at least one Hello Tomorrow Challenge Grand Winner, among them Sweetch Energy from France, harnessing osmotic power to generate renewable energy, and Onward Medical from the Netherlands, specialised in restoring movement and other functions in individuals with spinal cord injuries. This reflects not just the volume of deep tech activity in these ecosystems but consistent progression to the highest levels of the competition.

The Runner-ups (Ranks 11 to 20)

The next ten extend the geographic spread further with Brazil in Latin America (#16) and Australia in Oceania (#18). The Runner-ups also include Sweden (#11), Singapore (#12), Türkiye (#13), followed by Japan (#14), Italy (#15), as well as China and Finland tied at #19-20. Denmark (#17) stands out in this group with the 2021 Hello Tomorrow Grand Winner Atlant 3D, building an advanced atomic-scale manufacturing platform enabling accelerated development of next-generation electronics.

The Most Productive Ecosystems Per Capita

Raw output tells only part of the story. Adjusted for population, the ranking reveals a different set of standouts: smaller nations whose density of deep tech activity is exceptional relative to their size. Estonia leads globally per capita, ranking #23 overall with just 1.37 million inhabitants. Singapore ranks #2 per capita (#12 globally and a population of 6.04 million), followed by Switzerland (#3 per capita, #7 globally with 9.03 million inhabitants), Israel (#4 per capita, #5 globally with 9.97 million population), and Luxembourg (#5 per capita, #41 globally), a nation of just 682,000 people whose per capita deep tech output rivals ecosystems many times its size.

Regional Leaders

Every region of the world is represented in the 2026 Radar. The United States leads North America, France leads Europe, and India leads Asia & the Pacific. In the Middle East and North Africa region, Israel leads, while Brazil tops Latin America & the Caribbean, and South Africa heads Sub-Saharan Africa.

Ranked #2 in Sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria is worth noting for the 2018 Hello Tomorrow Challenge Grand Winner RxAll, revolutionising pharmacy financing and drug safety across both Africa and the United States.

Access the full ranking: https://hello-tomorrow.org/deep-tech-pioneers-radar

The 2026 Hello Tomorrow Challenge: 950 Pioneers, 108 Countries

Alongside the Radar, Hello Tomorrow announces the 950 Deep Tech Pioneers from 108 countries, selected from over 4,800+ applications in the framework of the the 11th Hello Tomorrow Challenge.

With 35% being university spin-offs from institutions including MIT, the University of Cambridge, and ETH Zürich, the 2026 cohort applies science to some of the world’s most pressing challenges across Healthcare, Energy and Environment, Food and Agriculture, Advanced Computing and Electronics, Industrial Biotech and New Materials, and Manufacturing and Construction.

Supported by ASML, L’Oréal, Breakthrough Energy Discovery, dsm-firmenich Ventures, Damen, NXP Semiconductors, GTT Strategic Ventures, Syensqo, Safran, the 2026 Hello Tomorrow Challenge surfaces technologies with the potential to reshape core industries, including:

-In Energy and Environment, several pioneers are developing the next-generation battery value chain, including solid-state, new anode materials, as well as battery recycling and repurposing, to reduce dependence on critical minerals whose extraction and refining are controlled by a handful of countries.

-In Industrial Biotech, deep tech ventures are commercialising enzyme-based processes that break down plastics into reusable feedstocks, alongside bio-based polymers designed as drop-in replacements for conventional materials;

-In Advanced Computing, startups are building chip architectures that perform AI training and inference on the same chip, cutting training data requirements by up to 80% and reducing energy consumption in the process;

And many more.