We're excited to share that Leap Laboratories won the Novel AI track at Deep Tech Momentum's DTM100 pitch competition, along with two additional jury prizes! It was a great opportunity to share our work with investors, potential collaborators, and fellow deep tech founders.
Our DTM100 Results
At DTM100, Leap Labs received:
- 🏆 Winner of the Novel AI Track
- 🎯 Straight to Investment Committee with V-squared Ventures
- ✈️ Exclusive invitation to TDK Ventures' flagship event
These prizes open up some exciting opportunities for us, including direct conversations with investors and potential strategic partnerships.
Why We Won
For those hearing about us for the first time, Leap is working to accelerate science across domains. We're a deep tech startup building general purpose technology that we believe will revolutionise scientific discovery. Our Discovery Engine uses AI and AI interpretability to analyse complex datasets about 100x faster than traditional manual methods, often uncovering patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed – completely automatically.
Here's the problem we're addressing: The standard scientific method is slow, biased, and the rate of novel discoveries is falling. Hypothesis-driven research can only explore a tiny fraction of the space of potential discoveries, and it's often guided by existing literature that has well-documented reproducibility issues.
Our approach is different. Rather than testing only pre-defined hypotheses, our Discovery Engine leverages the pattern recognition ability of deep neural networks to find meaningful relationships across the entire dataset. Some early results include:
- In plant biology, we discovered a novel genotype-nutrient combination that dramatically improves root structures – crucial for crop resilience.
- In meteorology, we found evidence disproving a foundational assumption of the field, with implications worth billions for weather modeling.
As one NCAR scientist told us: "It would take one postdoc year to analyse this data… and you found something that we may never have found, that could be worth billions."
This represents a huge opportunity for researchers and investors alike. We're building a future where scientific discovery is systematic, replicable, and extremely fast – limited only by the data we're able to gather.
You can see your pitch for yourself here!
About DTM100
Deep Tech Momentum is a relatively new conference – this was just their second year – but it's already attracting solid participants and investors. The competition evaluates startups across multiple dimensions: technology advantage, team strength, market opportunity, and traction.
The jury included investors from:
- Max Bautin (IQ Capital)
- Thomas Oehl (Vsquared)
- Susanne K. Schorsch (Amadeus Capital Partners)
- Florian Heinemann (Project A Ventures)
Winning in the Novel AI category and receiving recognition from these investors is encouraging feedback as we continue building.
What's Next
We're currently focused on:
- Running pilot programs with industrial R&D teams
- Preparing for our upcoming Series A round
- Expanding our partnerships with research institutions
If you're a researcher with interesting data, or an investor interested in our Series A, we'd be happy to chat – reach out to hello at leap-labs.com.
