(Editor’s note: The Eindhoven Business Briefing is part of our Tech Tuesday series. Dispatches covers tech because so many of our highly skilled internationals are scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs.)
We’re not cleared to reveal all, but trust us … a lot of changes are coming to High Tech Campus Eindhoven this year and in 2025. Some are ongoing.
Let’s start with the big news:
• The official opening of 3EALITY, the new immersive reality hub in HTC 37, is a 16 October invite-only event. 3EALITY already has a fairly high profile with a partnership with Design Academy Eindhoven and Trans Realities Labs.
The Trans Realities Lab, developed at the academy by Dr. Ian Biscoe, Professor Transdisciplinary Design Networks at DAE, and his research team, is a hybrid digital environment for research and a space for students to engage with research facilities to explore new technologies. “In the Trans Realities Lab, we are investigating future applications of the ‘metaverse’ and spatial web technologies,” stated Dr. Biscoe. “We clearly have a shared vision of the potential for networked applications of XR in industry and design collaboration, so I am excited that we have put this into practice by engaging the High Tech Campus and the 3EALITY hub in our Hybrid Lab research program.”
The Design Academy of Eindhoven is where, among other companies, video platform JW Player started. DAE and 3EALITY will work together on the Hybrid Lab research project to investigate the application of networked XR environments for collaborative design, according to the Campus newsletter. “We anticipate a shift in the required skillsets of employees in the future,” said Philipp Werle, Innovation Manager Emerging Tech at HTC. “To support that shift, one of the goals with the 3EALITY hub is to connect with academic institutions that apply digital twinning and immersive technology solutions with students in their research projects.
“We aim to bridge the creative and tech worlds through this collaboration.”
Other 3EALITY partners include Cary, North Carolina-based Epic Games and UK-based Metacampus, which is a LUMO Labs startup.
Among the companies moving in are VRinSchool, Prespective, DXRS, and Playsight: Virtual Warehouse Trainer.
• Lucis One (HTC 91), now the tallest building on Campus at 11 stories, will open later this fall. V.O. Patents & Trademarks, a High Tech Campus resident for the last 18 years, will be moving to the new building from HTC 84.
• Direct air capture (DAC) startup Carbyon has raised 15.3 million euros in what has to be 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. We talked at length with Hans for a special project that is coming up. HTC 32 is becoming part of the startup complex on campus.
• CEO Robert van Tankeren moved inPhocal into a space on the second floor of HTC 32 and we interviewed him for the same project. More on that later. inPhocal uses proprietary laser technology for a variety of applications from product marking to slicing and dicing silicon wafers.
Morphotonics closes $10 million-plus Series B round
Speaking of big investment rounds, Morphotonics just raised a significant 10 million-plus B round. We just got the release and new investors Minneapolis-based 3M and BOM (Brabant Development Agency) have jointed existing investor Innovation Industries, based in Amsterdam.
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 mprecisely 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.
Gaining 3M, one of the most diversified manufacturing and consumer goods conglomertes in the world, is a pretty good endorsement that this is a company to watch.
“We are at the brink of major growth for applications like glasses-free 3D displays and Smart AR Glasses. With this new funding, we will strengthen our market and technical leadership and expand our impact on the consumer electronics and display markets,” said Jan Matthijs ter Meulen, Co-Founder & CEO of Morphotonics.
Draghi Report
If you think the European lifestyle – lots of vacations, not so much work – is too good to be true, you’re not alone. Mario Draghi, the liberal MIT-educated economist, banker and former prime minster of Italy, just issued a report that Europe is falling behind the United States and China, and the lack of productivity is unsustainable.
European workers are less productive than their American counterparts and – not surprisingly – earn less. We know from personal experience that Europe lacks early stage capital. All this translates into the U.S. dominating lists of the top global tech companies, something we’ve pointed out repeatedly over the years. In fact, in the eight years since we founded Dispatches Europe, we’ve seen U.S. tech giants acquire dozens of Dutch startups and scale-ups, including GrAI Matter Labs, Intrinsic ID, Sapiens and Luxexcel. Qualcomm tried to acquire NXP, but was blocked by China.
But we’ve never seen a major U.S. company acquired by a Dutch company since ASML acquired Cymber back in 2012.
Mistral, Europe’s great AI hope, is likely to get acquired by Microsoft, which invested about $16 million into the French startup, capital that will convert to equity in the next funding round. And you know how that will end up.
In the 400-page report, Draghi encourages European leaders to focus on clean energy and high tech, simplify competing R&D efforts, relax regulations and streamline energy markets. In other words, adopt policies right out of the Ronald Reagan playbook, minus the pandering to the Religious Right. Well, except for one important point: Draghi recommends the EU spending 800 billion per year – financed by collective debt – to avoid “an agonizing decline.”
Reagan was a private sector guy but European companies don’t seem to be in a huge hurry to invest in new technology.
According to a list published by the European Commission, Draghi’s team received 236 contributions — in writing or in meetings — from think tanks, universities, lobbyists, EU bodies, trade and business associations and some NGOs.
The list includes Brussels-based research institutions, big tech companies such as Google and Amazon, the European Central Bank and top non-EU universities such as the London School of Economics or Harvard, according to Euronews.
Europe gives away AI sector to the U.S.
Last month, the AI Act entered into force in Europe. It is a first attempt to regulate AI developments. While in the United States there is no comprehensive regulation on AI, the EU decided to introduce regulatory oversight that sets boundaries and that wants to protect human rights.
We get that.
But when we went to a presentation by an entity that wants to collect fees to help companies negotiate the new AI regulatory labyrinth, it because clear the consultants are going to be the only winners in Europe.
The AI act classifies AI into four risk levels: unacceptable risk, high risk, limited risk and minimal or no risk. Including biometric categorization: techniques that classify individuals based on biometric data, such as inferring race, political beliefs, religion or sexual orientation. Before marketing their AI tools in Europe, developers must “confirm conformity with the Act’s requirements.” And of course, there will be a new AI regulatory agency, as well as regulatory agencies in each of the 27 EU countries. We’re not making this up.
Data crunching predictive tools such as Palantir will be regulated as will real-time remote biometric identification technologies, even by law enforcement.
The impulse to protect its citizens is admirable. But when it’s the Wild West everywhere else, that’s just not practical. Maybe the EU should wait to see who the most egregious offenders are before they punish everyone.
Well, that went well
They tried it in New York City. They tried it in Berlin. Now, the Dutch are finding out that rent controls not only don’t work, they make things worse.
In July, the Dutch passed rent controls on 300,000 units. That made the apartments unprofitable, so many owners are selling into a hot market, cashing out at a time when there are far more aspiring home buyers than sellers. That means renters are scrambling to find new digs in an environment where there are fewer apartments available.
“The sad reality is that for home seekers it now has become harder than ever to find a rental property in an already tight market,” says Michiel Vrijman, who runs the Dutch operations of Heimstaden Bostad AB, a Swedish company that owns 13,500 flats across the Netherlands and is in the process of selling about 20% of them.
Housing is not just a social issue or political chip. It’s key to Eindhoven’s huge companies recruiting and keeping talent.
New chip factories in UAE could equal big revenue for ASML
TSMC and Samsung each are considering whether to invest in aggregate at least $100 billion in new chipmaking facilities in the United Arab Emirates. That would make the UAE the center of the semiconductor world and move production well away from Taiwan, which is in the sights of an increasingly aggressive China.
It could also mean a lot of new business for ASML, which makes the only real choice in the photolithography machines essential to making the most advanced chips. Because new fabs mean investing in the latest tools.
The major obstacle is that making computer chips requires water. Lots of water. The emirates collectively have a lot of oil but very little water. The UAE also has to import talent, and building huge new fabs would mean shifting a lot of jobs away from Asia to the Middle East … a tough political sell. The Wall Street Journal has a detailed post.
Long … and now tall
We stumbled across this kinda big deal for Strijp-T. The longest building Philips ever built, Building TX, is being repurposed and redesigned. The former machine factory, dating from the 1950s, produced televisions and X-ray equipment, among other things, according to the Strijp-T website. The building is 270 metres long (about 885 feet) and 67.5 metres (220 feet) wide
The building, under redevelopment since last summer, will get three, five-story office buildings built on top of the original structure. Which tells you a lot about how they used to build stuff here. LeydenJar, which makes pure silicon anode batteries, will be one of the first tenants.
–––––––––
Read more about High Tech Campus Eindhoven here in Dispatches’ archives.
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
