What is CIT?
What is the Valley of Death?
The “Valley of Death” describes the difficult transition between research, development, and successful commercialization. While many technologies demonstrate exceptional promise in laboratories or early prototypes, they often fail before reaching widespread government or commercial adoption due to funding shortages, manufacturing challenges, regulatory barriers, or lack of customer access.
Critical Infrastructure Technologies (CIT) exists to help innovative companies successfully cross this valley by connecting emerging technologies with government agencies, strategic partners, investors, manufacturers, and end users.
The Challenges
Funding Gap
Many promising technologies exhaust research funding before commercial investment becomes available.
Technology Transition
Moving from prototype to operational capability requires validation, testing, and customer engagement.
Manufacturing Scale
Producing commercial quantities requires supply chains, manufacturing partners, and operational planning.
Market Access
Finding the right government or commercial customers is often the greatest challenge facing innovative companies.
Technology Transition Journey
Research
Prototype
Validation
Commercialization
Deployment
How CIT Bridges the Valley of Death
Strategic Partnerships
Building relationships between innovators, government, industry, and academia.
Business Development
Helping member companies identify opportunities and engage decision makers.
Capital Access
Connecting companies with investors, funding opportunities, and commercialization resources.
Technology Acceleration
Supporting rapid transition from innovation to operational capability.
Cross the Valley of Death with CIT
Whether you are an emerging startup, established manufacturer, government organization, or investor, CIT helps accelerate critical technologies from concept to deployment.
Partner With CIT