Pioneering Deep Tech Institute

Build your deep tech. Keep your IP.

We're a nonprofit that helps inventors turn a working prototype into a company they still own. We give them the space, the capital, and the manufacturing help to get across the last mile, and we keep no IP.

Apply to build with us Fund the bridge

People working at a bench in a bright workshop, with the Salt Lake City skyline and the Wasatch Range visible through the window wall behind them.

A place to build, in the city where the builders already are.

The problem

Deep tech founders get stuck between concept and company.

The resources never arrive together. Venture capital wants scalable evidence. Grants want bounded aims. And the founder still needs a place to build, a way to get the thing manufactured, and somebody who can get it paid for.

Capital
Equipment
Staff
Legal and regulatory
A path to first product

The gap is not ambition. It is synchronization: equipment, manufacturing judgment, validation, counsel, and company formation, all moving at once.

8.4% against 13.7% company formation, now against 1978
72% of 2024 venture capital went to four states
Years that cleared devices wait for coverage

A builder in Utah with a finished prototype faces no capital, no introductions, and no way through. And proven treatments sit uncovered for years.

What we are

A nonprofit deep-tech incubator. Funders, not investors.

We're a nonprofit deep-tech incubator, like Activate or the DOE lab programs. We don't have investors; we have funders. The return is leverage, not ownership: every philanthropic dollar is built to unlock a multiple of downstream private capital, plus Utah jobs and community benefit.

The only nonprofit that builds it, makes it, and gets it covered, without owning it.

Device makers do not incubate. Advocacy foundations do not build. Hospital innovation centers build, then take the intellectual property.

How we are governed Why we built this

The programs

Three programs. Three stages of one journey.

We build companies. We get their products made. We open the door.

Start line

Zero to MVP

We build companies.

The founder keeps it. EmberGraph is the proof, drink-safety is next.

Bring us a prototype

An engineer in safety glasses working at a Bambu Lab X1-Carbon 3D printer, with the slicer software open on a laptop beside it.

Last stretch

Final Mile

We get their products made.

The manufacturing final-mile, the gap nobody else owns.

Get your product made

Two hands working over a populated green circuit board under a magnifier lamp, holding a soldering iron and fine tweezers.

Open door

Access Pathway

We open the door.

Proven treatments and devices that can't get paid for. We publish the evidence and drive the coverage.

How the pathway works

A working prototype is not a company. A company is not a product until it is manufactured. And a product nobody can buy or get covered never crosses the chasm.

The door

Some things work, and still nobody can get them.

Let me make the third program real. The first instance is my own reconstruction.

The implant has been FDA-cleared since 2022. The surgeons are here in Salt Lake. The literature runs five hundred plus cases abroad. And still: no billing code, no coverage, years of fighting for every inch.

That is not a technology failure. It is a pathway failure. So we walk it through: publish the case, drive the code, open the coverage. It has been done before.

Andrew Piskadlo, President and CEO

How the Access Pathway works Read the Credo

The stake

What PDTI takes.

In full, and it does not change

Zero equity, no IP capture, and a modest 3% product-linked royalty that recycles into the next builder, capped at 2x our cost, with a five-year sunset.

0% Equity taken

0 Intellectual property captured

3% Product-linked royalty, capped at 2x our cost

5 yrs Then the stake sunsets

The royalty recycles. It funds the next builder, not a return to a shareholder. That is what makes a philanthropic dollar here compound instead of exit.

Fund the bridge Apply to build with us

The building

The model, made physical.

PDTI runs on borrowed benches today. The next raise signs a lease on one place: a central shop where we finish the companies we incubate and start the next ones. The shared equipment every builder reuses, the bench that took EmberGraph from empty repository to product, and the room to run more than one company at once, under one roof.

This is the switch-on. $500,000 opens the door and runs the building through its first year, while the companies inside land paying work and the next founders arrive. A lead gift here is not general support. It is the lever that turns the whole institute on.

Switch it on How PDTI works

The proof

Built in 6 weeks. Operating now.

EmberGraph Intel is the first company built through Zero to MVP. It does investigative discovery on a fixed budget agreed up front, where every claim maps back to a verifiable exhibit. It is open for engagements. One clean run of a pathway built to repeat.

6 weeks empty repository to production
~$200 of compute to get there
2,100+ automated tests behind it

EmberGraph is a separate operating company with its own clients, its own counsel, and its own brand. PDTI holds no equity in it and captured none of its intellectual property. That is the model working exactly as written.

See how EmberGraph works Fund the next one

The people

The talent is already in Utah.

PDTI is governed by a Board of Directors with active oversight of mission alignment, financial stewardship, and program-level decisions.

Andrew Piskadlo

CEO & President · Managing Director, EmberGraph Intel

Physicist and engineer; founded PDTI to build deep-tech companies founder-aligned: no IP capture, modest product-linked stake.

Full bio →

Nick Witham, PhD

Chief Technology Officer & Vice President · Co-founder

Biomechatronics engineer; founder of Gaia Technologies; PhD U of Utah Bioengineering 2024; R&D at Blackrock Neurotech.

Full bio →

Michael Greenwald

Secretary · Co-founder

Mathematician, chemist, and medical student; co-founder focused on safeguarding researcher autonomy.

Full bio →

And the people are not hypothetical. Our board and counsel are seated. Our builders are working: embedded, robotics, data infrastructure, aerial systems. Behind them is a reservoir this state is full of and nobody collects. Manufacturers, senior and systems engineers, surgeons, regulatory hands, working fractional on hard problems.

The talent is already in Utah. This is where it converges.

Capability

Seven capability clusters.

Deep tech is convergence. Multiple disciplines forced into one product. PDTI builds where the disciplines meet. Each program spans the clusters it needs.

PDTI

Built where the disciplines meet

Compute & Data

Signal processing
Data infrastructure
Verification & provenance

Active

Robotics & Mechatronics

Robotic systems
Sensors & actuators
Embedded control

Active

Materials & Fabrication

Advanced materials
Process & fabrication
Characterization

Phase 2

Bio & Microfluidics

Bench chemistry
Diagnostic platforms
Synthetic chemistry

Active

Sensing & Signal

Optical & RF
Environmental sensing
Signal extraction

Active

Power & Propulsion

Generation
Storage
Nuclear

Phase 2

Space & Aerospace

Flight hardware
Mission instruments
Life support

Phase 3

Compute & Data
- Signal processing · Data infrastructure · Verification & provenance
Active
Robotics & Mechatronics
- Robotic systems · Sensors & actuators · Embedded control
Active
Materials & Fabrication
- Advanced materials · Process & fabrication · Characterization
Phase 2
Bio & Microfluidics
- Bench chemistry · Diagnostic platforms · Synthetic chemistry
Active
Sensing & Signal
- Optical & RF · Environmental sensing · Signal extraction
Active
Power & Propulsion
- Generation · Storage · Nuclear
Phase 2
Space & Aerospace
- Flight hardware · Mission instruments · Life support
Phase 3

Each program spans the clusters it needs. EmberGraph Intel is the first company built through Zero to MVP. It sits at the Compute & Data and Sensing & Signal intersection. More companies follow. See how PDTI works.

Pick a path

Four kinds of relationship.

Someone makes it. Someone pays for it. Someone supplies it. Someone tells people it exists. Each brings something specific and each gets something specific, and we tell you fast if the fit is wrong.

PDTI

Four kinds of relationship

Builder

Bring the prototype. Keep the company.

A deep-tech idea with a clear community-benefit multiplier. We provide infrastructure, capital, and legal and regulatory support. No IP capture.

Apply

Funder

Bring capital. Switch on capacity every builder after reuses.

Underwrite the founder-aligned model. Individual donors, foundations, and program-aligned funders. Utah 501(c)(3) since February 2022.

Support PDTI

Supplier

Bring capability. Get mission-aligned pipeline.

Labs, manufacturing nodes, regulatory partners, compute providers, clinical sites, and educational institutions.

Partner

Amplifier

Bring audience. Get work that survives scrutiny.

Journalists and analysts working on a story. Press kit, boilerplate, and sourced bios.

Press and media

You can be more than one of these, and many partners are. Each relationship in full on About. Mismatched fit goes to a better home elsewhere, and we tell you fast.