Inside the EU-Asia DeepTech Bridge: 6 Voices Shaping What Comes Next

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We flew to Singapore to film six conversations with founders, investors, and academics at the A5X conference. Here's what they told us about the EU-Asia DeepTech bridge.

Earlier this month, we got an invitation we couldn't turn down. NUSX — the National University of Singapore's innovation and enterprise arm — asked us to fly to Singapore and film at the A5X conference. So we packed our gear and went. The result? A special interview series made in partnership with NUSX, featuring founders, investors, and academics from all over the world. ### What We Set Out to Explore Our focus was simple but ambitious. We wanted to dig into the shared challenges facing DeepTech ecosystems. We wanted to understand the developing bridge between Europe and Asia — not as a buzzword, but as something real and tangible. And we wanted to hear what each region can learn from the other. From university venture building to defense innovation, from AI in healthcare to national AI strategies, the series paints a picture of how the world's most ambitious innovation ecosystems are thinking. And more importantly, where they're heading. We filmed six conversations. Here's who we spoke to, and what each one covers. ### The Interviews **Dr. Tan Sian Wee – Senior Vice President (Innovation & Enterprise), NUS** The NUS Enterprise story: the A5X vision, billion-dollar ambitions, Singapore as a global launchpad for DeepTech — and the launch of Nova, NUSX's full-stack AI platform for opportunity discovery. **Dr. Orna Berry – Technical Director, Google Cloud** Former Chief Scientist of Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade on what makes innovation ecosystems work, the real bottlenecks behind the AI wave (compute, infrastructure, data, talent), and what Europe can do differently. **Dr. Babak Parviz – CEO & Founder, NewDays.ai** The founder of Google Glass on applying AI to dementia and cognitive care, building trust in healthcare AI, and what small companies can do in healthcare that tech giants cannot. **Prof. Helmut Schönenberger – Co-Founder & CEO, UnternehmerTUM; VP Entrepreneurship, TUM** What Europe and Singapore can learn from each other on university venture building, closing the gap between lab and global market, and competing for global DeepTech talent. **Prof. Benjamin Tee – VP (Ecosystem Building), NUS Enterprise** Inside the lab-to-market engine: the Physical AI Venture Lab, deciding when research becomes a company, and building DeepTech spin-outs that can compete globally from Singapore. **Gary Ang – Professor of Practice, Defence Innovation & Applications, NUS Enterprise** Dual-use innovation done properly, DefenceTech's journey from R&D to real-world use, and the emerging Europe–Singapore DefenceTech partnership. ### The Big Picture Across all six conversations, a few themes kept returning. Talent is the real bottleneck. Universities are becoming the engines of DeepTech venture creation. And the Europe–Asia bridge is no longer a talking point — it's being built, one partnership at a time. > "The bridge between Europe and Asia isn't a future possibility. It's already under construction." What struck us most was how often the same challenges came up on both sides of the world. Europe has deep research and strong universities. Asia has speed, scale, and a hunger for commercialization. When those strengths meet, something powerful happens. We also heard a lot about what's missing. Compute. Infrastructure. Data. And above all, talent. Every single person we spoke to mentioned talent as the thing that keeps them up at night. Not funding, not regulation — talent. That's a problem worth solving. And it's one that Europe and Asia can tackle together. Watch the full series, and let us know which conversations you'd like us to take further. We're already planning what comes next.

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