(Editor’s note: This year-end Eindhoven Business Briefing wrap up is part of Dispatches Tech Tuesday series. We cover tech because so many of our highly skilled internationals are engineers, physicists and entrepreneurs.)
What a crazy year for Eindhoven. One minute ASML is leaving, the next minute the Dutch government is dedicating 2.5 billion euros to get them to stay. One minute, political leaders say they want to get rid of all international students, and the next minute TU/e ‘s president says that’s not gonna happen.
One minute the ecosystem’s lineup of startups and scale-ups is flourishing. The next minute the Americans have snapped them up.
Kinda makes you wonder what’s coming in 2025.
While the past is not a predictor of the future, it contains important lessons and insights. Or as Mark Twain said, “History might not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.” As we put this post together, we realized that after the dust settled, our contention that Eindhoven is the dominant tech hub in Europe is not hyperbole and 2024 proved it.
ASML
The biggest news of 2024 is the 2.5 billion euros the previous caretaker Dutch government bequeathed to Eindhoven to fund Operation Beethoven, the Brabant region’s plan to help keep ASML – Europe’s most valuable tech company by capitalization – in Eindhoven. While the funding is remarkable, the question is, “Is there an actual plan?” And will it stay?
Here’s what we know:
• A projected half of the funding will go to improved mobility. Brainport has announced an underground bus station under the existing central train station, express buses running to ASML and Technical University of Eindhoven and a wider A2 fast road.
• Infrastructure upgrades would make possible construction of 20,000 homes in the area north of centrum, relieving some of the pressure on housing.
• A proposed 50 million euros will go to retraining and upskilling Dutch workers and 150 million euros to upgrade schools in primary and secondary education.
High Tech Campus Eindhoven
At its 25th anniversary, this center of the Eindhoven ecosystem had multiple announcements and reveals for 2024, including an event marking the anniversary of its founding by Philips, which relocated to Amsterdam but still has operations here.
• The Campus now has nearly 300 companies including the global HQ of chipmaker NXP and a total of about 12,500 people, up from 10,000 back in 2020.
• HTC 91, or Lucis One, debuted in November with a party on the 10th floor of what is now the tallest building on Campus and the grooviest office space in Eindhoven. The glass and steel high-rise already has a number of tenants, including Molex, Infoland, and V.O. Patents and Trademarks.
• High Tech Campus unveiled its new marketing campaign that goes all-in on startups and scale-ups. A number of Eindhoven startups and scale-ups are emerging as future Unicorns, raising hundreds of millions of euros. And many are headquartered at High Tech Campus. In fact, more than 100 of the nearly 300 Campus companies are listed as startups or scale-ups.
The Campus campaign includes a new landing page with all the details about what’s available for young companies, complete with video interviews with successful entrepreneurs such as Hans De Neve at Carbyon and Robert van Tankeren at inPhocal.
• HTCE officials announced big plans for the next decade. On the south side of campus, there’s 100,000 square meters (about 1 million square feet) scheduled for development. Construction starts in early 2025 on two new buildings, 17, 500 meters square or about 180,000 square feet in total. These spec buildings are in anticipation of demand for high-quality space for R&D operations in Brainport, the designated development district that includes Eindhoven.
The big question is, are Campus officials positioning HTCE for the biggest prize of the decade – a photonics fabrication plant for research?
Mid-2025 is the date construction will theoretically start on two fabs in the Netherlands funded by the PIXEurope consortium, which consists of public and private entities from 11 countries, including the Netherlands, selected for contract negotiations to develop a European pilot plant for advanced photonic chips.
Two points in favor of the campus are that PhotonDelta, the European network of researchers, chip designers, foundries and software developers, as well as SMART Photonics, which designs and builds photonics chips, are based there.
• E Ink makes HTCE its European HQ
We missed the arrival of E ink at High Tech Campus at the end of 2023. This is a big deal because HTC 69 is now the European headquarters for this company, which has a 95-percent market share of the global ePaper market. E Ink is a publicly traded company based in Taipei. Founded in 1997, it is the creator, pioneer and market leader in ePaper technology. With more than 3,000 employees worldwide, E Ink brings a small team to Eindhoven but has big plans for expansion.
• New emersive tech hub
The new 3EALITY immersive tech hub opened on 16 October. The new hub is in HTC 37 in a completely renovated space that includes about half of the ground floor. Epic Games is a partner.
Philips continues to stuggle
Our sources tell us Philips just cut another 250 people, mostly in HR, continuing efforts to cut costs and bulk up the share price. The good news is, Philips settled its big suit last April over its continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) ventilator suit back in May for $1.1 billion. That’s far less than the $4 billion experts had projected, considering the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it had received 116,000 reports of problems, with 561 deaths linked to the devices.
Still, Philips still generates billions in revenue, with partnerships and operations across the globe. In fact, we dedicated an entire EBB to what Philips means to Eindhoven, spinning off NXP and ASML along with a dozen other conmpanies built on Philips research.
Mergers and acquisitions
• Last February, Santa Monica, Calif.-based tech company Snap Inc. (which owns the Snapchat messaging app) acquired GrAI Matter Labs, which was partly based at High Tech Campus Eindhoven though the HQ was in Paris.
Unless you read a post we wrote a year ago for High Tech Campus, you’ve never heard of GrAI Matter Labs, but Snap clearly considers them the next big thing in aritificial intelligence. GML developed neuromorphic system-on-a-chip platform that processes more like the human brain than a conventional CPU. In that interview with Menno Lindwer, VP of Intellectual Property at GML, we had to digest so much AI jargon – “latency,” “neural networking,” “sensory inputs” – that we’re only now back to normal.
But here’s what the GrAI Matter VIP chip can do in the real world: “The chip can be built into applications, such as smart robots that can track a person, speakers that process music and even medical devices that recognize heartbeats and other real-time audio inputs.”
The Eindhoven branch was responsible for architecture exploration, hardware design and AI tools, with Paris and San Jose focusing more on GML applications and business development. The company drew on talent from Philips, Intel and Qualcomm. If you read French, here’s a more detailed post.
• Synopsys acquired Intrinsic ID
Synopsys, Inc. acquired Eindhoven-based Intrinsic ID last March. Synopys developed Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) IP used in the design of system-on-chips. We interviewed Intrinsic ID founder Pim Tuyls in November 2023, who told Dispatches Dutch startups should go to the U.S. sooner than later. You can see that post here.
• JW Player merged into JWP Connatix
JW Player, the Eindhoven-born company that created the technical foundation for YouTube and other streaming video, merged in October with an American company to form JWP Connatix. Both Connatix and JW Player were based in New York City, though JW Player founder Jeroen Wijering oversees an Eindhoven R&D operation. Customers include Accuweather, Axel Springer, Dotdash Meredith, McClatchy, Penske Media Co., and more. JW Player will keep its Eindhoven offices.
Funding
. Nearfield Instruments, headquartered on High Tech Campus Eindhoven and in Rotterdam, raised a $148 million C round in July from investors led by Walden Catalyst, based in San Francisco, and Temasek Holdings, based in Singapore.
Read more about founder and CEO Hamed Sadeghian here.
• Direct air capture (DAC) startup Carbyon has raised 15.3 million euros, one of the biggest A rounds lately in Eindhoven. The company has developed patented technology to capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere. Founder and CEO Hans De Neve has moved his expanding team to the third floor of HTC 32 from HTC 27.
• Morphotonics raised a 10 million-plus B round in September. Here’s the media release. New investors Minneapolis-based 3M and BOM (Brabant Development Agency) have joined existing investor Innovation Industries, based at High Tech Campus.
The nanoimprinted display scale-up’s slogan is, “Any optics, any display, any size,” and Morphotonics makes mobile screens, 3D displays, outdoor-readable smartphones immersive AR smart glasses and other products. Morphotonics’ technology is based on lithography, technology that precisely add complex structures, such as lenses or prisms, onto substrates like glass or foils – “to produce any optics, for any display, at any size,” according to the website.
• Eindhoven-based Axelera AI, which makes software and hardware technology for generative AI and computer vision inference, raised $68 million (about 63.5 million euros) in a fresh capital from both existing and new investors.
• LUMO Labs announced new 100 million euro fund
LUMO Labs, based at High Tech Campus Eindhoven, announced in July that it had raised a new 100 million euro fund.
LUMO Labs focuses on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The new fund “means an expansion in capital for more regional diversification and more room for follow-on financing to increase the financial, social and environmental return on its investments,” according to the media release we got.
Focus areas include SDGs Good Health and Well-being, Quality Education and Sustainable Cities & Communities, Climate Action and Digital Security. Investment categories include the Internet of Things, virtual and augmented reality, blockchain and especially (deep-tech) Artificial Intelligence, according to the release.
During the next four years, LUMO Labs will invest in approximately 30 to 35 impact-driven digital technology startups with LUMO Rise Fund. Startups that get funding enter LUMO Labs’ venture-building support program.
Misc.
As part of Operation Beethoven, the Dutch effort to placate a restless ASML and Technical University of Eindhoven is dramatically expanding the number of students getting their masters in degrees relevant to the semiconductor sector. By 2030, the number of master’s students is projected to be about 2,000, with about 10,000 more graduating each year.
Crazy stuff
• Eindhoven Airport wants to ban biz jets starting in 2026. No, really. This in a city blessed with multiple global companies such as ASML, where CEOs and other C-suite executives have a legitimate need for instant travel options to Asia and the U.S. Sigh ….
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
