Technovator Labs “The Route of Deeptech: From Earth to Venus”

Technovator Labs is back — and this time, we’re going to Venus.

Technovator Labs is Technovator’s signature format for close-up conversations with frontier thinkers, the people who are not just talking about the future, but actively building it. Unlike a panel or a keynote, Technovator Labs is designed to feel like being in the room where it happens: a candid, intellectually rich exchange between an exceptional guest and a curious audience. Think of it as a working session with someone who has already crossed the boundary between bold idea and real action.

This edition picks up the thread started with the Technovator Labs series at Startup Moldova Summit 2025, where we explored how deeptech startups are reshaping industries, and goes further. Deeper into the science. Deeper into the entrepreneurial mindset. And, quite literally, deeper into space.

Join us on April 21 at 15:00 at iHUB Yellow for an exclusive conversation with Guillermo Söhnlein — co-founder of OceanGate, founder of the Humans2Venus Foundation, and a rare thinker who has spent 25+ years turning the most radical scientific ideas into real, living systems.

About Guillermo Söhnlein

Guillermo Söhnlein is one of those rare figures who has spent 25+ years not just advising deeptech ventures, but founding them, from a speech recognition startup acquired in Silicon Valley in 2001, to co-founding OceanGate, the deep-sea exploration company that captured the world’s imagination. He is trained as an economist and lawyer, but has built his career entirely at the frontier of what technology can do for human exploration.
Today, Guillermo is perhaps best known for his most audacious bet yet: the Humans2Venus Foundation, which he co-founded in 2020 with the mission of establishing a permanent human presence of 1,000+ people in the Venusian atmosphere by 2050. Why Venus and not Mars? Because at 50km above the surface, Venus offers near-Earth gravity (~1g), ~1 atm pressure, and temperatures around 25°C, conditions far closer to what humans need than anything on Mars. The challenges are known and solvable. The timeline is ambitious but grounded.

What does it take to transform frontier science into something the world hasn’t seen yet?

Guillermo‘s answer is as concrete as it is bold: a permanent human habitat floating in the Venusian atmosphere, 50km above the surface — where gravity, pressure, and temperature already resemble Earth. Not science fiction. A methodical innovation roadmap grounded in existing science and engineering knowledge.

At Technovator Labs, we’ll explore the deeper questions behind the mission:

• how breakthrough technologies move from research labs to real-world systems
• how scientific knowledge gets structured and mobilized for innovation at a civilizational scale
• what it means for ecosystems like Moldova to become genuine contributors to frontier science — not just observers

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📍 iHub Yellow

🗓 April 21, 2026

🕕 15:00

🎟Limited seats — secure yours now