How to Raise $147M for Deep Tech Hardware

Your First Startup Will Teach You What Not to Do. Your Second Is Where You Get It Right.

Patrik Möller’s first deep tech company, Replisaurus Technologies, raised €60M and failed. His second, CorPower Ocean, has raised $147M to solve one of the hardest problems in renewable energy—generating electricity from ocean waves.

The difference isn’t luck. It’s a playbook. Möller’s journey is a masterclass in learning from failure and applying those lessons to build a capital-intensive hardware business the right way. He made the classic mistakes so you don’t have to.

Lesson 1: The Wrong Way to Fund Deep Tech

In 2002, joining the dot-com boom, Möller and two university friends spun his master’s thesis in semiconductor manufacturing into a startup. The Swedish venture ecosystem was nascent, so they got creative.

They raised initial capital from operator-angels—people who had built companies themselves. They secured non-dilutive grants, scholarships, and PhD support. So far, so good. This early bootstrapping allowed them to make progress without giving up meaningful ownership.

But then they hit the traditional VC path, raising tens of millions from firms like Northzone and Wellington Partners. They bought a factory and scaled the team, preparing for a major commercial ramp-up.

Then the 2008 financial crisis hit. Strategic buyers vanished, the capital markets froze, and a bidding war for their technology evaporated overnight. They had planned for an 18-month software fundraising cycle, not a multi-year deep tech slog. The company was forced to sell its technology for parts.

The Common Mistakes in This Story

Giving up too much, too early. "Delay VC until you’ve built value," Möller advises. By taking institutional money before they had a fully de-risked product and clear market timing, they put themselves on a clock they couldn't control. When the market turned, they had no leverage. · Underestimating the timeline. Deep tech, especially with a hardware component, takes longer than you think. They needed another two years of pilot production to get to meaningful revenue. But their financing strategy didn’t account for a major market downturn. · Confusing strategic interest with committed capital. A "promising bidding war" is not a signed term sheet. When the macro environment changes, handshakes and LOIs disappear.

Lesson 2: The Right Way—A Playbook for Capital-Intensive Hardware

After the humbling exit, Möller almost returned to the corporate world. Instead, he met an inventor with a radical idea for wave energy inspired by the pumping principles of the human heart. Wave energy is a notoriously brutal industry, littered with failed companies whose machines were destroyed by storms.

Möller was skeptical. But he saw that the new design had the potential to solve the two core problems that killed everyone else: survivability in harsh ocean environments and high power generation relative to cost.

This time, he built the company differently, applying the painful lessons from Replisaurus.

The Autopsy-First Approach to Innovation

Instead of rushing to build, Möller and his new partner went on a "listening tour." They systematically studied the failures of their predecessors. They visited the world’s leading wave energy research centers in Lisbon, Edinburgh, and Trondheim.

They interviewed academics, founders, and engineers from failed companies. They didn’t ask what went right; they asked what went wrong. Their goal was to build a complete taxonomy of failure modes in the industry.

This is a critical, non-obvious step most founders skip. Before you write a line of code or build a prototype, you must become the world’s expert on the mistakes made by others in your field. Your first product spec should be a checklist of failure modes to design against.

The Phased De-Risking & Financing Strategy

Möller knew CorPower needed a massive amount of capital over a long period. But instead of raising a huge round upfront, he sequenced the financing to match specific de-risking milestones. This strategy builds investor confidence at each stage and protects your equity.

Capital: Non-dilutive "soft funding" and angel checks. Möller relied heavily on InnoEnergy, a European entity that provides grants and early-stage support. This pre-seed phase is for lab tests and simulations.

Your Goal: Raise $500k - $2M in grants, academic partnerships, and small angel checks to get a third-party validation of your core science. Avoid institutional VCs entirely at this stage.

Goal: Build and test a scaled-down prototype in a real-world environment.

Capital: The first real VC round, likely from deep tech specialists or strategic investors. Now that the core science is de-risked, you can justify a valuation that doesn’t give away the company. CorPower used this phase to test its technology in controlled ocean environments.

Your Goal: Raise a $5M - $15M Series A to build the Minimum Viable Hardware product and get it into the hands of a pilot customer. You should aim to give up 15-25% of the company.

Goal: Deploy a full-scale commercial pilot and show it can operate reliably and economically.

Capital: Larger growth equity, project finance, and major strategic investment. For CorPower, this meant deploying their first full-scale devices in the ocean off the coast of Portugal. This is the capital ($100M+) used to build factories and scale production, but it only comes after the technology and market risk are gone.

Rethinking the Founder Mindset for Hardware

Möller’s journey highlights a fundamental difference between software and deep tech entrepreneurship.

Embrace Long Cycles: You are not on an 18-month clock. Plan your runway in 24- or 36-month increments. Your board must understand that you are building infrastructure, not an app. · Master Public and Private Funding: Deep tech founders must become experts at navigating government grants (like ARPA-E in the US or EIC in Europe), university partnerships, and non-dilutive foundations. This is your lifeblood before VCs will take you seriously. · Build an Investor Syndicate, Not a Single Lead: At each stage, you need a mix of capital. A government grant provides validation, a strategic investor provides market access, and a financial VC provides scaling discipline. A single funding source is a single point of failure.

How to Apply These Lessons This Week

Map Your Non-Dilutive Capital: Create a spreadsheet of every grant, research program, and foundation that funds work in your field. List their deadlines, requirements, and past awardees for the next 12 months. This is your new sales pipeline. · Conduct Pre-Mortems: Identify the 3-5 most significant companies that tried to solve your problem and failed. Find their founding teams on LinkedIn. Reach out with a simple, honest email: "Subject: Question about [Failed Company]. Hi [Founder Name], I'm an engineer working on [Problem Area] and I'm trying to learn from the challenges you faced. Would you be open to a brief 15-minute call to share your perspective on what made it so difficult?" · Re-Stage Your Funding Plan: Re-evaluate your pitch deck. Are you trying to raise too much money for too many milestones? Break it down into discrete "de-risking" phases. Clearly state: "We need $X to prove Y." This shows investors you are capital-efficient and milestone-driven.