Pioneering Deep Tech Institute

Help us build deep-tech companies that keep ownership with the founders.

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.

Three panels of PDTI work: a Bambu Lab X1-Carbon printing a prototype beside a slicer on a laptop, hands soldering a populated circuit board under a magnifier lamp, and a gowned engineer at a microscope reading a false-colour die map.

Prototype, bench, cleanroom. Your gift buys the equipment in these photographs.

The programs

Three programs. Three stages of one journey.

Zero to MVP

We build companies.

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

Final Mile

We get their products made.

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

Access Pathway

We open the door.

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

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.

What PDTI takes

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.

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.

The building

What a lead gift switches on.

The equipment below is the bench any donor can fund. A lead gift does something larger. It signs the lease on the building: one central shop where we finish the companies we incubate and start the next ones, with 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.

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. This is the gift that turns the whole institute on.

Considering a gift at this level? Write to us and you will reach a person who can walk you through exactly what it builds.

What your money buys

Named equipment, not general support.

Every amount below is a real line item at its real quoted cost. You can look up any of it.

$200

Microcontroller dev kits. Teensy, RP2350, ESP32-S3, STM32. Where a prototype starts.

$850

One bench oscilloscope. A 12-bit Rigol DHO924S. The instrument every debug session runs through.

$1,500Pictured

A complete rework bench. ESD surface, soldering, hot-air rework, scope. Where a board stops being a prototype.

$3,500

A CO2 laser cutter. Enclosures, fixtures, and jigs in an afternoon instead of a month.

Hands doing board-level rework: soldering iron and tweezers on a populated circuit board under a magnifier lamp. — **This is the bench.** Not a stock photo of a bench. A gift at $1,500 buys this one, and the next builder through the door uses it.

Larger gifts unlock shared capability the whole portfolio runs on: an ELISA microplate reader at $8,800 anchors both drink-safety and kidney readout, an analytical workstation at $10,500, and the shared GPU spine at $32,000.

Give now

Make a gift

PDTI pays no platform or processing fees on your gift. Zeffy, the form below, is free for nonprofits and funded by an optional contribution to Zeffy that appears as a separate line at checkout. It is pre-filled and fully adjustable. Set it to any amount, including zero, from the dropdown. 100% of your donation reaches PDTI either way.

Prefer not to use the form? The campaign also lives at zeffy.com/donation-form/support-pdti.

Transparency

Here's the EIN. Go look us up.

Legal name Pioneering Deep Tech Institute Inc

EIN 88-0691219

Status Utah 501(c)(3) since February 2022

Form 990 Filed for TY2025

A Utah 501(c)(3) since February 2022, formerly Utah Research Institute. Both names resolve to this organization under the same EIN. Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law, and your receipt is generated automatically and sent to you by email. Board governance and director profiles at /people. Mission and operating model at /about.

Other ways to give

Donor-advised funds, stock, wire, and crypto

Card gifts cap at $4,999. Everything below clears that ceiling, and stock and crypto carry tax advantages a card gift does not.

Donor-advised fund

Recommend a grant through your DAF sponsor. Your advisor needs only two things, and both are on this page: Pioneering Deep Tech Institute Inc and EIN 88-0691219. Tell us it is coming and we will watch for it.

Let us know

Appreciated stock

Giving appreciated securities directly avoids the capital gains you would pay by selling first, and PDTI receives the full value. Start the transfer below, or write to us and we will walk it through with you.

Give stock

Wire or ACH

We provide account details directly rather than publishing them, which is standard practice and protects both of us from payment-diversion fraud.

Request details

Cryptocurrency

We accept crypto through Engiven. Gifts are converted on receipt and you receive documentation for your records.

Give crypto

Talk to us

A person, not a form.

If you want to direct a gift to a specific program, give above the card limit, ask how the royalty actually works, or just get a straight answer about where the money goes, write to us. You will get a reply from a person who can answer it.

Ask a question How PDTI works