One of the things we hear most often from deep tech founders is that building the technology is not the hard part, explaining it is. Turning real science, advanced engineering or complex systems into something an investor or early customer can understand quickly is one of the most common challenges to early success.
But there is a new layer to this challenge. Increasingly, the first entity that tries to understand your company is not a person. It is an AI system.
Investors are already using AI tools to research companies
This is no longer a prediction. It’s happening now.
A 2025 Harvard Business Review article based on interviews with seven prominent venture capitalists found that AI is now involved in almost every tech investment they review. These VCs told researchers that generative AI tools help them understand markets, compare companies and quickly assess the quality of pitches before they ever meet a founder. In other words, an AI system will form a first impression of your startup before you get the chance to explain it yourself.
Other industry sources point in the same direction. Deal sourcing platforms such as 4Degrees report that many VC teams now use tools like ChatGPT to scan sectors, build lists of potential companies and speed up early research. Academic work has also shown that large language models (LLMs) are beginning to influence the venture selection process by assisting with screening and comparison.
Add to this the shift happening inside traditional search. Google now shows AI summaries at the top of many results. That means an investor who searches your space may see a machine written description or landscape overview before they see your website.
For deep tech founders who are raising or planning to raise, this matters. Visibility is not only about humans any more. You need to be understandable and discoverable in the places AI systems look first.
What this shift means for your communication
This does not mean founders need to become content machines. It means they need to build clear signals in the right places.
Signals that help humans understand the value of the technology. And signals that help AI systems correctly recognise and describe the company.
This usually comes down to a few practical principles.
- Clarity - Do not make your audience work to understand what you do. Be explicit about the problem you solve, the technology you use and the value it creates. Investors will often skim before they dive, so the essential facts need to be easy to find and easy to process.
- Consistency - Keep your core description aligned across your website, public profiles, pitch materials and third party mentions. AI tools rely on patterns. When your story looks different in every place you appear, it is harder for both people and machines to understand you.
- Credible third party sources - AI systems trust editorial or industry sources more than company-owned content. Even brief mentions in reputable places help reinforce who you are and what you do.
- Structured facts - Clear factual information such as your category, technology type, founding year, location and milestones helps AI tools classify your company correctly.
In simple terms, you need to tell a great story and you need to make it easy for the world and LLMs to repeat it accurately.
Why this matters even more for deep tech
Deep tech companies face a tougher clarity problem than most sectors. The technology is often complex, the categories are sometimes new and the terminology can be difficult for generalist audiences. When an investor or potential partner or customer relies on an AI tool for a first pass, that tool needs enough accurate, consistent and credible information to form a fair view.
If it does not find those signals, you risk showing up as a vague description, a misclassification or not showing up at all. And that can quietly weaken your position during a raise without you ever knowing it happened.
If you want to chat about how to make your company easier for both humans and AI systems to understand and discover, feel free to get in touch- info@commplicated.com
