Zoe Chambers isn鈥檛 messing around. In the technology sphere, the days of investing in incremental change are over, particularly in a post-pandemic world. 鈥淔or us it has to be a billion-dollar opportunity,鈥� she says.
That鈥檚 because Chambers, who is part of Octopus Ventures鈥� 鈥淒eep Tech鈥� team, knows the company can add enormous value to a strong idea.
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Deep Tech, she explains, is the stuff that no one can be sure of quite yet. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a really risky part of the asset class; we have to be OK with failure,鈥� Chambers says. But, she adds, this is 鈥渁bsolutely what VC money is made for.鈥� After all, there is a limit to the amounts that governments can be expected to invest 鈥� and to the risks they can take. 鈥淓ntrepreneurs with the right drive and some capital behind them can go after the big crazy ideas,鈥� she says.
The proof of concept is there in Octopus鈥檚 track record. It backed the , for instance, which is now an integral part of Amazon鈥檚 digital assistant Alexa. It also invested in the image processing firm Magic Pony, which was subsequently bought by Twitter.
Both of these ventures came from founders who had strong links to the best institutions in UK academia (Cambridge and Imperial College respectively). And there are more on the way. One example is . This Cambridge-based company makes fruit-picking robots that are seeing service in the UK and Australia. 鈥淭wo of the senior leadership team were previously part of the Microsoft Research Cambridge team that developed the machine learning part of Kinect, so they knew computer vision and depth-sensing technologies inside out,鈥� Chambers says.
Robotic fruit pickers
Dogtooth鈥檚 focus has been on automated strawberry picking. Their robot can identify ripe strawberries, accounting for the correct redness, snip them off the stalk, 鈥榞rade鈥� the berries and then package them.
But it鈥檚 not just about jaw-dropping technological achievements. Part of the reason Octopus invested is because the Dogtooth team know their market inside out. A key board member is also the head of a large soft fruit grower鈥檚 co-operative. 鈥淭hey know exactly what their customers will be looking for,鈥� Chambers says.
The scarcity of agricultural labour, particularly in a post-pandemic environment, means that the machines are听 arriving at just the right time. Having fruit rotting in fields is far from ideal, Chambers points out. Not only is it lost money, but food wastage is also extremely detrimental to the environment: if it were a country it would be the third biggest contributor to climate change behind the USA and China.
Dogtooth now has 28 robots, some of which have spent the UK winter working in Australia. 鈥淔or UK customers, it appears there could be no time like the present to start trialling and paying for these services,鈥� Chambers says. 鈥淭his has been a fascinating journey with a long lead-in, but definitely worth the wait.鈥�
Another deep tech sector where the customer鈥檚 needs are central is in augmenting human abilities. When margins in retail are so tight, for instance, how do you give your staff superpowers so that they can prevent customer-unfriendly queues from forming, anticipate stock shortages and ensure shoplifters don鈥檛 chip away at the profits? The answer, according to Octopus-funded startup , lies in wearable technology linked to the store鈥檚 CCTV systems. 鈥淚t鈥檚 helping people have eyes in places where they just can鈥檛 have eyes,鈥� Chambers says.
In an increasing number of retail stores, Third Eye鈥檚 software is analysing CCTV footage in real time and sending alerts to staff when an intervention might be needed. Their algorithms understand customers鈥� posture and movements, for instance, identifying those who seem to be stealing from the shelves. 鈥淪taff or security guards get a query, with a snippet of the video, on their smart watch, and can swipe 鈥測es鈥� if they think there is a theft in progress,鈥� Chambers says. 鈥淭his helps the model learn, and they can go and check. It鈥檚 much better to intervene at the time, rather than try to catch someone on the way out.鈥�
Third Eye鈥檚 founders are specialists in computer science and machine learning and they have built their software to be ethically as well as technically excellent. Because it analyses only pose, posture and behaviour, there is no room for racial and gender bias. 鈥淯sers love it,鈥� Chambers says.
Octopus has also invested in a company spun directly out of the University of Cambridge that aims to solve the cocktail party problem. This is a well-known issue in signal processing: in a room full of noisy conversation, how do you separate out the voice you want to listen to? 听Humans do it with ease but machines have always had trouble. Now the team of engineers that have formed think they have an answer.
Chambers saw the AudioTelligence solution during what she describes as 鈥渙ne of the best demonstrations I鈥檝e ever been in.鈥� It is enticing to Octopus for two reasons. One is a straightforward business case: digital assistants such as Amazon Alexa have exactly the same problem as us. They might be playing music in an already-noisy family kitchen, adding to the clatter of pots and pans, the chatter of children and adults, and with all that noise reflected off the room鈥檚 hard surfaces. But the machines still need to be able to hear their command word, and what is said afterwards. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really vital that machines can hear what they need to hear, and not be listening to any other signal,鈥� Chambers says. 鈥淸A digital assistant] can鈥檛 turn itself down, so it has to decide which signal it should pay attention to.鈥�
Solving social isolation
Besides the digital assistant angle, the algorithms make internet calls audible despite the background noise of children, dogs and life in general 鈥� part of the 鈥渘ew normal鈥� for many. A further possibility that gets Chambers excited is in hearing aids, helping stem the growing problem of social isolation. 鈥淣oisy environments can make people not want to put themselves in social situations,鈥� Chambers says. 鈥淲hen you think about our ageing population, and how people are becoming more detached, how great would it be to solve that?鈥�
For Chambers, decisions about where Octopus鈥檚 money should go are always about the people behind the tech. Entrepreneurship requires more than good ideas; it also requires vision, she says. 鈥淚 look for a storyteller, someone with a vision of something you can鈥檛 imagine but can help you see the steps to reach it.鈥� Another key ingredient is excitement. 鈥淵ou have to be excited about the journey because it鈥檚 often long and painful,鈥� Chambers says. Most important of all, though, is an idea that鈥檚 going to drive change towards a better world. 鈥淚鈥檓 particularly interested in overlaying deep tech with making an impact in wider things like climate change,鈥� Chambers says.
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