Introducing: the U.S. Frontier Tech Map
America's map of frontier technologies for explorers and investors
Today I am launching the U.S. Frontier Tech Map – an interactive platform that visualizes where and how America is building the future of human civilization.
You can now explore the landscape of AI, space, robotics, energy, biotech, quantum, industrials, and defense technologies from across the nation, all in one place.
As I sit here in San Francisco, watching container ships coming in from the horizon and self-driving cars gliding through the streets, I keep thinking about parallels to the past. Columbus sailing across the Atlantic. The California Gold Rush. Apollo crossing the void to the Moon. Each one was a moment when the boldest people in the world ventured into uncharted territories, and the world reshaped itself around them.
We are living through another one of these moments. Compute is the new gold, with hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into the infrastructure that will power the next era of intelligence. Space is the new land, with the Artemis II mission reminding us that humans can go back to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years. And now AI is moving from our screens into the physical world – building factories, navigating roads, automating science labs, and soon, maybe even becoming a part of our societies.
I have spent the last decade working in venture capital and frontier technologies. From organizing one of the world’s largest conferences on artificial intelligence in 2017, to joining Seraphim Space (where I designed the SpaceTech Map), the European Space Agency, Oxford University, and establishing the Center for Space Governance. Across this entire journey, I kept running into the same problem: there is no platform to track who is actually building the future of humanity and how things are evolving over time.
You can scroll on Twitter. You can watch the boys at TBPN. You can even pay for Pitchbook. But nothing shows you the geography of innovation – which ecosystems are flourishing, what is being invented, and how the dots are all connected.
So I decided it was time to build it myself.
The map has 1,700+ entities across:
8 areas of frontier technologies: artificial intelligence, space technology, robotics, energy innovation, biotechnology, quantum, industrials, and defense tech
23 innovation ecosystems from Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C.
Institutions, universities, companies, investors, programs, events
Stock market feed with real-time share prices and performance
Funding tracker with updates on venture capital, M&A, and IPOs
Events calendar with all the upcoming conferences and expos
College rankings with the affiliation of each company’s founders
You can hover over any ecosystem to learn about it, click on any pin to zoom in to its location, filter by category and/or technology, and search for anything on the map.
For investors, I have also developed a real-time market intelligence layer with early-stage dealflow and analytics, which can be made available by request.
This is the first project of the Civilization Atlas – my broader mission to map the landscape of human civilization, to explore and invest in frontier technologies.
Every week, I will be sending out a short summary of the new startups, funding updates, and upcoming events that appear on this map. Once in a while, I will also include some company spotlights and deep-dives into cool ecosystems and technologies. Sign up to this newsletter to receive your weekly intelligence!
If you want to report something that is missing / inaccurate, or want to request access to the real-time market intelligence layer, contact me at bartu@civatlas.org
Follow me on Linkedin and Twitter to stay connected.
Let’s build a beautiful world together!
– Bartu