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Sunken Treasure — Türkiye's Stranded R&D Pool

Cargo, value, difficulty of the dive, first-aid ship, anchor points, expectation.

Markdown source: Tri-Anchor_Sunken_Treasure_Turkiye_Stranded_RD_Pool.md

Sunken Treasure

Türkiye's Stranded R&D Pool: Mapped, Counted, on the Seabed

The cargo, its value, the difficulty of the dive, and the anchor points

Tri-Anchor Partners — Working document — v0.1 — August 2026 Audience: New York and Hong Kong investors managing funds at billion-dollar scale. All figures from public sources; source list at the end.

One page

Türkiye spends roughly $20 billion a year on R&D. In the same country, money going into startups in 2025 was $622 million by the narrowest count (StartupCentrum, 359 rounds) and $1.4 billion by the broadest (KPMG & 212, 360 deals, acquisitions included). For every 30 dollars that go into research, at best 2 dollars and at worst 1 dollar go into product.

Even the gap between the two counts says something: the market is so thin that including or excluding a handful of large deals doubles the total. The exit door of a $20 billion R&D machine is a hole that, depending on definition, swings between $600 million and $1.4 billion.

This ratio is an anomaly. No mature ecosystem in the world shows this much distance between money into research and money into product. Where such a gap exists, money is either being wasted or being stored. In Türkiye it is the latter: more than 12,800 ventures in 114 technoparks, 1,363 R&D centres, more than 10,000 domestic patent applications a year, tens of thousands of projects completed with public support; and against all that, 360 investment rounds a year.

Only 17 percent of patented technology ventures have ever raised investment. The remaining 83 percent are cargo: researched, patented, never productised; closed with a "successfully completed" report and sunk to the seabed.

We look at this wreck as a salvage crew: how much cargo, what is it worth, how hard is the dive, why has no one raised it, and where do we drop anchor.

I. CARGO: VISIBLE ON THE SURFACE

Assets that can be seen, counted and addressed.

Asset Size Source
Technology Development Zones (technoparks) 114 active zones in 47+ provinces Ministry of Industry and Technology, April 2026
Ventures operating in technoparks 12,800+ Minister's statement, April 2026
Of which incubation companies ~3,000 Ministry TDZ statistics, August 2024
Companies with academic partners ~2,100 Same source
Foreign or foreign-partnered companies ~485 Same source
Private-sector R&D centres 1,363 active in 58 provinces; 80 new certificates in 2025 Ministry 2025 Annual Report
Full-time R&D personnel ~310,000 Presidency statement, 2025
Annual domestic patent applications 10,186 (2024); 414 in 2002 TÜRKPATENT
Annual domestic utility model applications 3,065 (2024) TÜRKPATENT
University-origin patents / utility models 1,640 applications from 148 universities (2024) TÜRKPATENT
Technology ventures holding at least one patent 1,347 ventures, 3,065 applications Patent Effect, Türkiye Patent Report 2024

Reading: The cargo is large and mapped. Every asset has an address, a registry number, and most have a public support file. This differs from most emerging markets: in Türkiye R&D is not invisible; it is registered and counted. In seafaring terms, the chart of the wreck has been drawn by the state and is public.

II. CARGO: LYING ON THE SEABED

Assets that are unseen but proven: projects completed, never turned into product.

Indicator Size Source
National R&D expenditure (2024) TRY 651.8 billion ≈ $19.9 billion; 1.46% of GDP TurkStat
Private-sector share TRY 422 billion (64.8%) TurkStat
Central budget allocated to R&D (2024) TRY 178.6 billion TurkStat
Projects supported by TÜBİTAK in 2025 10,539 projects, TRY 14.5 billion Presidency statement
Health alone over 23 years 14,344 projects, TRY 82 billion Minister's statement, June 2026
Share of indirect R&D incentives in private-sector R&D spend 25.1% (14.8% in 2015) TurkStat
Applications to the young entrepreneur programme in a single call 2,031 applications, 101 selected (5%) TÜBİTAK BiGG 2025-1

Reading: Every year tens of thousands of projects are completed with public support and "closed successfully". A public mechanism to track whether a closed project became a product was set up in the early 2020s; but the aggregate commercialisation rate is not published. That silence is a data point for us: if the rate were good, it would be published.

We define the cargo on the seabed as: projects completed with public support in the last five years, holding a patent or utility model application, stuck at technology readiness level 4–7 (from lab validation to prototype), and never funded. There is no exact count; our rough estimate is five digits. Turning one percent of them into product means a portfolio larger than Türkiye's entire annual venture capital volume.

III. THE VALUE OF THE CARGO

The salvage crew's second question: the cargo is large, but how much of it is worth anything?

Low-value cargo (the majority): - 89% of private-sector R&D spend is done inside large companies with more than 250 employees. These projects are improvements to existing products; not suited to becoming independent companies, and already owned. - A significant share of technopark ventures are software-services companies set up for incentive purposes; they carry no scalable IP. - Most university patents were filed for academic incentives; their industrial counterpart is weak.

Valuable cargo (the minority, our target): - Civilian applications out of the defence industry. Ankara accounts for 27.8% of national R&D spend, weighted toward defence and aerospace. Autonomous systems, sensor fusion, image processing, robotics: mature technology never carried to the civilian market. - Health technologies. More than 14,000 projects and TRY 82 billion over 23 years; the country is rapidly localising its own pharmaceutical and medical-device production; domestic and Gulf demand are ready. - Manufacturing and materials technologies. 47% of manufacturing R&D is in high-tech and 40% in medium-high-tech; projects emerging from inside the automotive, white-goods and machinery supply chain, the closest to physical AI. - Agriculture and energy automation. Low competition, high public priority, directly transferable to the Turkic world and the Gulf.

The AI effect (post-2023): With the spread of large language models, three things happened at once. An AI component became standard in project applications; on the software side, the cost of a prototype collapsed, so the software portion of the submerged reserve is surfacing on its own; and the real bottleneck shifted to hardware, certification, field validation and sales. Our operator layer sits exactly on this bottleneck. Software is now cheap; physical product is still expensive and slow. The treasure is on the physical side.

Value estimate: Within the valuable cargo, we assume that of every 100 projects reviewed, 8–12 can be turned into product and 2–3 can reach export. This is better than the hit rate of classic early-stage venture capital, because the cargo is not a raw idea but a prototype validated with public money.

IV. THE DIFFICULTY OF THE DIVE: WHY NO ONE HAS RAISED IT

The wreck has been on the chart for thirty years; why has foreign capital never dived?

1. Dispersion. The cargo is scattered across 114 zones, 148 universities and 1,363 R&D centres. There is no central showcase. A foreign fund cannot see it; seeing it requires being inside, speaking Turkish, reading the files. That is our local diver.

2. Ownership tangle. In a publicly supported project the IP sits sometimes with the university, sometimes with the company, sometimes with the researcher. Clearing it takes patience and law. A financial investor does not do this; our first 90 days exist to do it.

3. The founder gap. The owner of the project is usually a researcher, not a product founder. "There are teachers, no masters." The Programme Director model answers this gap directly: it takes the project, places a founder alongside the researcher or in their place.

4. The chasm between public validation and market validation. Projects close with a "successfully completed" report; but nothing has been sold to any customer. No PoC, no pilot, no price. The investor in Türkiye says "no product" and moves on. We see this gap as an operations problem, not a capital problem: it closes with a 6–9 month pilot programme.

5. Doubt about scale and exit. The transition from seed to Series A is structurally weak in Türkiye; the median round in 2025 was $600,000; total volume fell from $2.6 billion in 2024 to $1.4 billion in 2025 in the absence of a single mega-deal (KPMG): the market depends on a handful of transactions. The number of corporate venture arms stayed flat at 92; no new fund was set up. The foreign investor thinks "I can't grow it, I can't sell it." The answer is the three-market architecture: the exit for a product validated in Türkiye is not in Türkiye.

6. Macro. Currency, inflation, political headline risk. Real; but in our model the entry cost is in lira and low, the exit is in dollars and abroad. Currency risk works in our favour on the entry side.

Summary: no one has raised it because raising it is operations work, not capital work. That is not the financial investor's muscle.

V. THE SIZE OF THE CHANCE

Three numbers:

$20 billion / $0.6–1.4 billion. The gap between money into research and money into product per year is 14 to 30 times, depending on counting method. Two reputable sources giving figures that differ by a factor of two for the same year is proof of how thin the market is: a handful of deals set the total. This gap is a hold that refills every year; unlike a wreck, it does not run out.

17%. The share of patented technology ventures that have raised investment. Read it in reverse: four out of five patented ventures have never seen capital. No pricing, no competition, entry point at the cost of productisation.

25%. A quarter of private-sector R&D spend is financed by indirect public incentives; the share was 15% in 2015 and is rising. The state has already paid part of the cost base of every project we will enter, and will keep paying.

Plus two structural tailwinds: - Companies receiving R&D incentives are obliged to invest 3% of those incentives in venture capital funds; this is a capital flow created by law for the local LP base, growing every year. - The state has begun distributing public contributions to venture capital funds on a call basis, with performance and leverage criteria; a fund arriving with a foreign anchor investor ranks ahead on those criteria.

V-A. THE FIRST-AID SHIP: THE STATE'S LATEST DECISIONS

The first ship to reach the wreck came from the state. Türkiye's Artificial Intelligence Action Plan, published by the Ministry of Industry and Technology, anchors with four axes and sixteen actions directly on top of what we call "cargo on the seabed". In the plan's own numbers:

Ship Its cargo What it means for us
1 GW of data-centre capacity; 10 million GPU-hours of access a year The state builds the compute infrastructure Portfolio companies rent GPUs, they do not buy them; capital goes to product
Target to mobilise $10 billion of private investment; single-window investor interface, roadmap in at most 30 business days An open, scheduled door for foreign capital The anchor investor's entry time is defined; the answer to "how long does it take in Türkiye" is in writing
Financing Ladder: Research Fund (seed, breakthrough, automatic GPU credit) + Growth Fund (Series A/B, public–private co-investment window) The state becomes a co-investor at fund level A public dollar next to every Blue Valley Fund dollar; the thematic-mandate door is officially open
Physical AI and Robotics Programme: transfer of defence, automotive and machinery capacity into autonomous systems and robotics Diving permit at the site of the most valuable cargo Our first anchor point (Ankara, Kocaeli–Bursa) is the plan's priority area
10,000 advanced specialists, 100,000 application professionals A human-capital target, with "who, from where" left open The Programme Director model is the private-sector counterpart to this target
Export calendar: first licensing by end-2027; 10 agreements, 3 markets, 25 overseas deployments by end-2028 A public calendar for exit Matches the calendar of our three-market architecture; our month-24 milestone coincides with the plan's 2027 target
Growth Zones, Centres of Excellence, regulatory sandboxes in at least 5 sectors, the state procurement Tech Catalogue Pilot, certification and a public buyer The infrastructure behind the sentence "prove the product here"

The plan's own phasing is the same as ours: 2026–2027 infrastructure and pilots, 2028–2030 scale-up and commercialisation.

Honest reading: The ship arrived, but it brought no divers. Almost all sixteen actions define inputs: GW, GPU-hours, funds, campuses, headcounts. The output side is thin: ten licensing deals by 2028, five robotics exports by 2030. The state arrives with the assumption that "if we put in resources, product will follow"; the lesson of the last fifteen years is that this assumption has not held. That is not the plan's weakness; it is our place: the ship carries the cargo, we do the dive.

VI. ANCHOR POINTS: WHERE WE DROP ANCHOR

Anchor Cargo Geography Why here
1. Physical AI and robotics Defence-origin autonomous systems, sensors, image processing; manufacturing supply-chain robotics Ankara, Kocaeli–Bursa industrial corridor Most valuable cargo, fewest rivals, most direct match with Eastern manufacturing capacity, open Western and Gulf demand
2. Health technologies Medical devices, diagnostics, hospital automation Istanbul and Ankara university hospitals 23 years of public investment, large domestic market, localisation pressure, Gulf health programmes
3. Agriculture and energy automation Sensors, drones, forecasting, grid optimisation Konya, the Aegean, the Southeast Low competition, high public priority, directly transferable to the Turkic world and North Africa

At every anchor the first step is the same: a 90-day screening round, 100 files, 10 shortlisted, 3 programmes. A Programme Director at the head of every programme, a "kill / continue" gate at the end of every programme.

VII. THE VALUE OF THE TREASURE AND THE EXPECTATION

So far we have described where the wreck lies, what it carries and how hard the dive is. The investor's last question is twofold: what is the cargo worth, and when, and at what multiple, does it come up?

Estimated value of the cargo

We calculate in three layers. Figures are indicative; the method is open, every line is in the verification list.

Layer What it measures Calculation Indicative value
Sunk cost Public and private money already spent on the cargo on the seabed ~10,000 publicly supported projects a year × ~TRY 1.4 million per project (2025 average) × 5 years + the non-commercialised share of private R&D [$3–6 billion]
Recoverable cargo Valuable cargo: TRL 4–7, patented, unfunded, in three verticals [8–12%] of the seabed cargo can be productised; productisation cost [$0.5–2 million] per project [$300–600 million] of productisation capital for [800–1,500] projects
Product value Value of the recovered cargo at product-company multiples Peer revenue multiples for physical-AI and health-technology product companies; three markets [$5–12 billion] year-5 portfolio value

Reading: The state has spent $3–6 billion on the cargo; with half a billion dollars of diving capital, that can become $5–12 billion of product. The ratio comes from a place classic venture capital cannot reach: the cargo is already paid for. We finance the dive, not the research.

Time and multiple: side by side with peers

Classic VC Classic PE (buyout) Venture studio (global peer) Sunken Treasure (target)
Entry point Idea / early product, market valuation Mature company, EBITDA multiple Built from zero, studio as co-founder Ready prototype, cost of productisation
Reaching Series A ~56 months — ~25 months 9 months: PoC and pilot
First revenue / first export 3–5 years day of entry ~2–3 years 18 months
Return of capital (DPI 1.0x) 7–10 years 5–7 years ~5 years (acquisition) 36-month target: every $1 back as at least $1
Average holding period 7–10 years 6.0–6.6 years, record high ~5 years 3–5 years to full exit
IRR benchmark ~21% mid-teens and falling ~53% We talk DPI, not IRR: 1.0x in 36 months, [3x+] in year 5
Why — — The studio absorbs 2–3 years of founding risk The state has already absorbed 2–5 years of R&D risk; we take the remaining 9–36 months

Classic VC's 56 months are spent on R&D and the search for product–market fit. The venture studio brings that down to 25 months because it absorbs founding risk itself. In the Sunken Treasure most of those 25 months are already behind us: the prototype exists, the patent exists, public validation exists. What remains is PoC, pilot, certification and sales; that is 9–36 months of work, not 5–7 years.

Honest note: DPI of 1.0x in 36 months is a claim above even the global studio benchmarks; the peers halve the time, they do not eliminate it. Three mechanisms carry this target: early start of licensing revenue (IP is sold, not product), three-market exit (no waiting for a single buyer), secondary sales (the Asian arms list early). The evidence of the first 18 months either carries this claim or drops it; it is presented to the investor as a target, not a commitment.

Appetite: those without a share of the pie

Indicator Value Source
Uncalled commitments (dry powder) in closed-end private capital funds, mid-2025 $4.63 trillion PitchBook
Buyout dry powder alone $1.3 trillion Global PE report, 2026
Share of dry powder older than four years (ageing) 24% Global PE report, 2025
Buyout-backed companies held longer than four years 16,000+ companies, 52% of inventory; record high 2025 data
Time to clear the US PE portfolio at current exit pace 8.5–9 years PitchBook, 2025
Venture capital entering Türkiye per year $0.6–1.4 billion StartupCentrum, KPMG
Ratio Money entering Türkiye each year is less than one-thousandth of waiting global dry powder calculation

Reading: Money is not scarce in the world; fast-cycling, uncontested, cheap-entry deal flow is. $4.6 trillion is waiting; more than half of buyout inventory is locked in companies held beyond four years; managers write that "12 is the new 5", meaning the same return now needs twice the speed. This money has not yet reached a flow that returns in 36 months, is half paid for with public money and has three markets; because the flow is in Turkish, dispersed, and needs an operator.

The value of the treasure is measured as much by the appetite of the capital that cannot reach it as by the cargo itself. The sum of those without a share of the pie is larger than all of those who share it. That is where we drop anchor.

Last word to the diver

This wreck is not hidden; the state has drawn the chart, counted the cargo, and stands ready to go halves on the dive. The only reason no one has raised it in thirty years is that raising it is a master's work, not money's work.

We do not bring the money; the money is already there. We bring the master.

Sources

Figures may change with reporting dates. Every number in this document is tied to a line in the "Due Diligence — Source Verification List"; no unverified figure goes in front of an investor.