(Editor’s note: This post about the Gerard & Anton Awards is part of our Tech Tuesday series. Dispatches covers tech because so many highly skilled internationals power Europe’s innovation centers.)
The annual Gerard & Anton Awards announcements at High Tech Campus Eindhoven are always a good time. Funded by multiple entities including Philips, Rabobank, EY, Holland Innovative, High Tech Campus (and occasionally Dispatches), food is great and everyone in the tech/startup community is there. But its most remarkable contribution to the startup ecosystem is the organizers’ ability to zoom in on the emerging teams that go on to raise serious capital and get to market … not an easy feat.
Gerard and Anton are Gerard Philips and Anton Philips, two early Philips executives and family members who built the Eindhoven-based electronics company into a global tech power. There was a time when Philips pioneered every great innovation from light bulbs to entertainment CDs to computer chips almost before there were actual computers. Too many companies to count have come out of Philips including ASML, Europe’s most valuable tech company, and NXP, the global chipmaker.
High Tech Campus Eindhoven former executive and connecter Bert-Jan Woertman and IO+ co-founder Bart Brouwers created the awards, which are essentially crowd sourced, with nominations from across the Brainport ecosystem. We’ll look at this year’s winners first, but looking back at previous winners is like a catalogue of Eindhoven’s startup stars.
Here are 2026 winners that we think have incredible potential.
• AI chip startup Euclyd has some serious promise because it has some serious backing including Peter Wennink, the former CEO of ASML.
• Avendar develops software that helps analyze large volumes of data, spotting trends for use in investigations and public administration decision-making. Think a European Palantir. Avendar is a LUMO Labs portfolio company and is based in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
• Photon Bridge is developing scalable packaging for photonic chips. And when we say “packaging,” this is not the plastic wrap consumer goods come in, but the technology to combine the photonic element and the silicon substate on a photonic chip.
You can see the full list here on Innovation Origins.
As we worked on this, several things struck us including the number of robust companies honored in the earliest events and the number that came out of High Tech Campus Eindhoven, which has multiple startup centers as well as the AI Innovation Center where Axelera AI was born. And this is really crazy – past winners show a 75-percent success rate compared to, well, single digits when you look at even Silicon Valley.
The G&A Awards go back to 2014, when they identified some heavy hitters:
• Intinsic ID, Pim Tuyls’s cybersecurity company which was acquired in 2024 by Silicon Valley-based Synopsys. Just last month, GlobalFoundries completed its acquisition of the Processor IP Solutions business from Synopsys.
• EFFECT Photonics, which was co-founded by Boudewijn Docter, now the head of the new photonics factory on High Tech Campus.
• The medical device startup Sapiens, founded by Sjaak Deckers, Hubert Martens and Michel Decré. Medtronic acquired Sapiens that same year for $200 million.
• Additive Industries was the first industrial 3D printing company in Eindhoven.
• Civolution was a digital audience measuring and analytics startup, but its component businesses were all acquired by larger companies.
• Nemo Healthcare develops monitoring technology to ensure safe childbirth and infant healthcare.
• Progression Industry is a TU/e spinout for researching, developing and commercializing green technologies for the auto industry … which has expanded to include both the Maritime and Aviation sectors. They’re still going.
Several others are still operating including Flowid, which has expanded globally.
The 2016 Gerard and Anton Awards have a wildly high percentage of survivors. Of course, they all didn’t make it. Cordian, which made cordless monitoring devices for cardiac patients, is closed.
This was just the first year! We don’t have room to go through 12 years of Gerard & Anton Awards. But we do want to briefly recognize the most successful.
2015
• SMART Photonics which is on High Tech Campus
• Avular, the drone team that was ahead of the trend
• Plastics recycler Ioniqa
Notable casualties: Fistuca and Spincontrol Gearing
2016
• Sendcloud, the e-commerce software which is arguably a Unicorn today
• ONWARD Medical is now traded on the Euronext exchange. It’s a neurotechnology company pioneering therapies to restore movement, function and independence in people with spinal cord injuries
2017
• Xeltis, which makes vascular implants. Xeltis raised $50 million in 2025 from the European Investment Bank and previous investors. It is relocating to High Tech Campus in September.
• Bambi Medical, which makes non-obtrusive monitoring technology for preemies
Notable casualties – Lightyear, the vaunted solar car that turned out to be a bad idea, poorly executed, and Amber Mobility, a car-sharing company which struggled, then merged with MyWheels in 2022.
2018
2018 was a good year for biomedical startups
• Salvia BioElectronics, the implant to relieve for migraine sufferers. Salvia was founded by Hubert Martens and others from Sapiens.
• STENTiT, which makes a resorbable stent, was founded by Bart Sanders and is a spinout of TU/e. They are based at High Tech Campus.
• Onera sleep diagnostic and monitoring solution. Its most recent raise was 30 euros million in 2024.
2019
2019 was notable for two Spatial Atomic Layer Deposition successes:
• SALD works with clients in solar, Green hydrogen, battery technology and others.
• Spark Nano – SALD for optimizing OLED-displays, flexible electronics, yield improvement photovoltaic panels and many other applications
• Eleo makes batteries for off-road EV equipment.
Notable casualty – Incooling, which tried to develop cooling for GPUs in data centers.
2020
• Touchwind makes mobile and floating wind turbines.
2021 No event because of COVID
2022
• Axelera AI recently raised 250 million, making it – for a while, anyway – the best funded AI/semiconductor startup in Europe.
• LionVolt raised 15 million euros to develop 3D solid-state Li-ON batteries.
• Ambagon: A TU/e spinout, raised 75 million euros in 2022 to develop new cancer treatments. The method focuses on keeping the diseased proteins in check and stalling tumor growth.
2023
• GrAi Matter Labs, a neuromorphoric startup with technology that mimics the brain, was acquired by Snap in 2024.
• FononTech raised 8.5 million in 2024.
• inPhocal uses laser technology to print on any surface. The team raised 5 million euros last year.
• Integer Technologies, a TU/e spinout and another LUMO Labs portfolio company, creates software for the efficient management of buildings.
Notable casualty – AlphaBeats, which used Philips technology to lower stress.
2024
• Senergetics uses a combination of IoT and proprietary AI models to detect and monitor processes in harsh and dangerous environments such as petroleum refineries and chemical plants. Companies can predict maintenance issues faster while increasing safety and can detect corrosion at the earliest stages.
• Sirius Medical creates surgical marker navigation technology. Sirius raised closed a 3 million euro B round in 2023.
2025
• Scil Nanoimprint Solutions: This Philips spinout created propriety photolithograph equipment for patterning nanostructures on large wafers. They raised 10 million euros in 2023.
• XIVER is yet another Philips spinout, and the only company in Europe dedicated entirely to manufacturing MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) as an independent foundry. MEMS are tiny sensors and actuators to detect physical changes (motion, pressure, sound) or perform precise mechanical actions in everyday devices such as smartphones, cars and medical equipment. The team raised 25 million euros earlier this year. Also based at High Tech Campus.
• Eyeo is revolutionizing image sensors with innovative technology based on nanophotonics. Instead of traditional color filters, which lose more than 70% of the light, eyeo utilizes physical structures to split light efficiently. The result is much sharper images, even in low light, as well as up to three times smaller sensors. Eyeo raised 15 million euros in 2025 and in May, closed a 40 million euro round. Based at High Tech Campus.
• ShanX Medical – A TU/e spinout, ShanX is developing an ultra-fast diagnostic system that determines within one hour which antibiotic is effective against a specific bacterium. The team raised 26 million euros earlier this year. Based at High Tech Campus.
After sorting through the data, the Gerard & Anton Awards validates the idea that great companies and great universities form the foundations of global innovation centers … like Eindhoven.
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
