(Editor’s note: This 3 October 2023 edition of the EIndhoven Business Briefing is part of our Tech Tuesdays series. Dispatches covers tech because so many of our highly skilled internationals are engineers, physicists and computer scientists.)
We’re dedicating this Eindhoven Business Briefing to all the startup/founders events and conferences coming up. They include events on High Tech Campus Eindhoven and involve HighTechXL and entirely new venture-building efforts that might be just what you’re looking for if you’re a highly skilled international.
Let’s start with the big one.
• The Immersive Tech Day at High Tech Campus Eindhoven coming up Thursday, 5 October will reveal the campus’ new Spatial Web Hub. This hub will bring together startups with the biggest names in immersive technology and Web 3.0. There will be demonstrations on how immersive technologies are influencing healthcare, education, entertainment and, well, pretty much our entire lives.
Demo partners include: Nvidia, only the hottest name in AI chips, CardsPLM, Epic Games, VERO, Philips, Movella, Fectar, Enversed, Leia Inc. and Anasaea.
You can see full details on all the demonstrations, as well as the schedule for the day, here on the Immersive Tech Day website. The Spatial Web Hub is in HTC 37, and you can see the campus map here.
• ExperienceXL on 27 October
This will be a full-day event that will start with an info session in the morning for potential co-founders of deep-tech ventures, a FasTrackathon and a HealthTechXL job fair.
If you think you’d like to become a co-founder of your own company, you definitely need to attend the info session at the beginning of the day. Learn about how the HighTechXL program works and what’s in it for co-founders. Make a list of questions to ask the HTXL team.
The FasTrackathon is planned for after lunch during ExperienceXL day. FasTrackathon is their signature “reverse-hackathon,” where advanced technologies are presented and teams interested in the technologies brainstorm application areas and business propositions.
There are already several technologies on the board, and those will be rolled out soon. Attendees can experience being an entrepreneur for a day or may just meet a fellow tech enthusiast or adventurer who wants to form a company to take the tech to market. As they say, anything goes at FasTrackathon.
Several HealthTechXL teams are currently in the HighTechXL deep-tech venture building pre-program. And as teams formally start the program, they will need more people. Teams hope to meet potential new members at the HealthTechXL job fair during ExperienceXL in the late afternoon.
It will be a big day, so bring a couple extra Red Bulls or Monsters. CU there.
We’ll have a link ASAP.
• Get ready for FasTrackathon: The Integrated Photonics Edition.
HighTechXL is partnering with PhotonDelta to roll out a special event at PIC Summit Europe.
This special reverse-hackathon will take place 8 November from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Evoluon, that flying-saucer looking building on the west side of town just off the big ring road.
The FasTrackathon is THE event for (future) entrepreneurs who want to start a deep-tech venture in the Integrated Photonics domain. It’s here that we should mention Integrated photonics is … complicated, a transition from conventional electrical circuits to processing at the speed of light. It’s a fast moving landscape with ever changing technology and infinite applications. Finding the right product-market fit is a challenge, especially in this field.
Not sure what to do or where to start? That’s where HighTechXL comes in.
At the FasTrackathon, organizers will translate PhotonDelta’s four opportunity roadmaps – agrifood, healthcare, automotive and data and telecom – into concrete and actionable business cases.
Groups will choose an opportunity roadmap and brainstorm technologies and application areas and developing their business propositions using the Market Opportunity Navigator.
Anyone can attend FasTrackathon at the PIC Summit. It’s a separate event run in parallel, so you don’t need a ticket to PIC Summit to join the fun at the FasTrackathon.
Come if you love integrated photonics. Come if you want to be an entrepreneur for a day. Join in if you are considering becoming a co-founder of a deep-tech venture using integrated photonics technologies to solve grand societal challenges.
Bring your boldest, most bodacious ideas.
Fe+Male Tech Heroes Awards 2023
Fe+Male Tech Heroes is only four years old (almost five), yet has managed to recruit more than 3,500 women and men and the support of High Tech Campus.
On 9 November, there will be a special event at the HTC Conference Center – the first night honoring the women and men who work hard to break glass ceilings and bring women into Eindhoven’s previously male-centric tech ecosystem.
The nomination process ended 27 September, and now we’ll find out who the awardees are in four categories:
• Female Tech Hero of 2023
• Hidden Gem Award
• Male Ally
• Corporate Inclusion Award
We have insiders at FTH and we know they’ve spent a lot of time uploading data on the 300 nominees and crunching the numbers so judges can assess each person’s contributions.
The event starts at 7 p.m sharp and the dress code is (we love this) “Red-Carpet Ready.”
You can get tickets here on the FTH website for 15 euros per person.
Biomaterials production at HTC
Smart BioMaterials Consortium is investing in a 4 million euro pilot production facility for smart biomaterials at High Tech Campus Eindhoven. These materials are used in the development of novel regenerative medicine applications, therapies which support the self-healing function of the human body. Think regenerative heart stints from Eindhoven startups such as STENTiT that promote tissue regeneration while being absorbed into the body.
SBMC’s production facility will be located in HTC 11 and will offer four GMP cleanrooms with a total area of 400 meters2, a quality control laboratory, offices and warehouse space. The facility is projected to open in 2025. In addition to the pilot production facility, SBMC operates R&D laboratories located at the campus of the Technical University Eindhoven, offering CRO services for biomaterials development.
SBMC’s pilot production facility is part of the National Pilot Factory for Regenerative Medicine. This ecosystem of specialized pilot lines is funded by the National Growth Fund and supports universities, research institutes, startups, and industry in developing, testing, scaling and producing novel therapies for regenerative medicine.
Billion euro bet
The EU’s Chips Act is now in force, and it’s a shockingly bold, uncharacteristically aggressive goal for Europe – wrest control of the global semiconductor industry and its supply chain from the Chinese and Americans. (Good luck with that.)
But the difference between wishin’ and hopin’ and actually doing something is the European Union’s 43 billion euro war chest to make this happen. That doesn’t count money from individual member states such as the Netherlands, which has a huge interest in this effort, seeing how it’s the HQ for ASML, NXP and all their suppliers. In fact, in the above chart, we’re pretty sure NXP alone accounts for both the smartphone (Apple iPhones) AND automotive (Ford) statistics.
If the Dutch and Germans lead the effort, who knows … maybe Europe wins. Whatever, the Americans are noticing. Apple CEO Tim Cook came to Eindhoven last week to hang out with NXP CEO Kurt Sievers, who’s German, not Dutch (who knew?). Just a couple of guys chillin’ and talking about controlling the world’s supply of computer chips.
If you have an Apple Watch or iPhone, you’re an NXP customer, and we say, “Buy local.”
Briefs:
• PhotonVentures, the venture arm of PhotonDelta, has raised 60 million for a new early-stage fund to boost photonic startups and scale-ups in the Netherlands and in Europe as a whole. The long-term plan is to raise a total of between 100 million and 150 million euros, with the fund close set for early 2024, according to the website. The general partners will prioritize Series A rounds, providing investments between 1 million and 2.5 million euros.
• Eindhoven ranks No. 4 on the the Global Innovation Index of the World Intellectual Property Organization, which compares the innovation capacity of countries and regions around the world. Eindhoven ranks fourth worldwide when it comes to top clusters of science and technology development per capita, ahead of Cambridge and Oxford and even San Jose-San Francisco-The Valley. In other words, Eindhoven is a patent factory, with engineers cranking out new IP every day.
Read the full WIPO report here.
• A second building is coming to Brainport Industries Campus. This will be a 17-hectare “factory of the future,” shared facilities where different companies within the high-tech manufacturing industry come together and collaborate. It will, like High Tech Campus, include green space “where an innovative work environment goes hand in hand with exercise and nature,” according to a post in Innovation Origins.
