Of these SaaS is still vastly the cheapest; even hardware costs aside, because the timescales involved are fundamentally shorter.
Trying to raise capital for hard science (besides rockets and quantum apparently) is a real drag. We went to DoD contracts instead.
Now - outside of crypto - most of the exciting untapped markets in tech are in:
a.) hardware, where you have bill-of-materials and contract manufacturing cost and everything takes longer to get off the ground
b.) hard sciences like fusion or satellites or aerospace, where you need a Ph.D and often some research experience to make progress (plus you have super high manufacturing costs)
c.) SaaS, where it helps to have deep knowledge of an industry so you've got those connections, understand all the internal processes of your customers, and can penetrate those sales processes.
All of these select for older founders and more capital requirements. I think the spray-and-pray approach for funding low-capital web startups isn't really viable in 2022, because consumers aren't just visiting any website or downloading any app that becomes hot.