(Editor’s note: The Europe Business Briefing, part of our Tech Tuesday series, is an occasional curated round-up of tech news across the continent. Dispatches covers tech because so many highly skilled internationals are coming here from the United States, Asia and Africa.)
Eindhoven just keeps increasing its lead over the other innovation centers. Hitachi High-Tech Company is establishing an innovation center on High Tech Campus Eindhoven dedicated to research for its latest line of AI-enhanced systems software. The Center will conduct technology development through open innovation with local academia and deep tech companies. (The Campus is an open innovation R&D center, which means companies, universities and research centers share info and ideas.)
“Hitachi High-Tech are creating digitalized assets that combine advanced AI, including physical AI, and innovating on a global scale with a focus on the semiconductor field through HMAX Industry,” according to the company’s website. We had to look it up, but HMAX is their technology that brings the power of AI to social infrastructure. Think trains, power grids, factory systems, finance (risk prediction) and healthcare. Pretty much all the elements of daily life.
Hitachi’s recent market cap was $132.76 billion, and it’s the world’s 167th most valuable company.
The Tokyo-based multinational, which focuses on energy, information technology and infrastructure, is already rolling out HMAX products. Last week, Hitachi began selling an “optimal operation guidance system” for chemical manufacturing plants, adding the product to its HMAX Industry portfolio of industrial digital solutions.
Hitachi chose HTCE to accelerate Lab to Fab in the product development and production processes of Hitachi High-Tech. Ongoing research and programs in the Netherlands were a big factor. Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research and other Dutch entities have done research on electron beam technology, a core technology of Hitachi High-Tech.
Croatia’s Infobip makes the Fortune list
Croatia’s unicorn Infobip, about which I’ve written previously, has been included in this year’s Fortune list of Europe’s most innovative companies. This ranking has been compiled by the respected American business magazine in collaboration with Statista. This is the second edition of the Europe’s Most Innovative Companies list, which includes 300 companies spanning 18 countries and 21 industries. The inclusion of Infobip goes to the point that while the United States has Silicon Valley, tech innovation is happening across Europe.
Infobip is the country’s very first unicorn. The company enables enormous companies to communicate effectively and quickly with users through various channels, from messaging and typical customer support to authentication and contact centers. Infobip is one of the most famous Croatian technology companies of all … and there are a lot! On Fortune’s list of the most innovative European companies for 2026, Infobip took an impressive 16th place. It shows astounding progress for this Croatian company that keeps on growing, especially when we consider that it stood in 68th place in 2025 in the technology sector and the process innovation category.
I mentioned the AI race and Europe’s pace in comparison to the likes of the USA and Japan, and Infobip has an important role here. The company has been working hard on positioning itself specifically when it comes to AI, as well as customer communication automation.
Fortune and Statista evaluated them according to three stringent criteria: internal business culture, innovation in products and processes. Although it allocates a smaller share of GDP to research and development than the USA, Japan and China, the post emphasizes that Europe as a whole keeps on creating weighty companies that have quite a significant global impact.
European investments into research and development have stood at around 2.1 percent of the bloc’s GDP for years, while across the pond in the USA, as well as in Japan, they hover around 3.45 percent.
Looking toward China, we see that figure stand at around 2.6 percent. Europe appears to lag behind, but it appears that these figures aren’t everything as the continent continues to impress. Fortune emphatically states that Europe has produced and continues to produce an array of cutting-edge ideas, patents and industrial innovations. As an example, it highlights the very encouraging fact that the European Patent Office recorded a record number of patent applications lodged last year. “Europe may not lead the AI race, but it plays an important role when it comes to that race’s infrastructure.”
At the very top of this year’s list is Eindhoven-based ASML, far from surprising given that it is the most crucial company in the global production of advanced chips. Fortune reports that Europe may not be in the lead when it comes to the AI race, but it plays an increasingly significant part in the infrastructure that enables that race. That’s particularly accurate when we look at categories such as semiconductors, manufacturing, industrial technology, telecommunications and advanced materials.
– Lauren Simmonds
Where will all the talent come from?
Berlin’s digital economy added 4,200 new startups in 2024, the highest formation rate in the city’s history. Venture capital continued to concentrate in Berlin at levels that dwarf every other German city. The ecosystem’s infrastructure of accelerators, co-working campuses and investor offices is denser than at any point in the past decade.
Yet a senior engineering search that averages 68 days to fill at the mid-level now takes 118 days at the staff level or above, according to recruitment firm Kitalent.
So, the European Union is making it easier for employers to draw on talent from outside the EU.
The EU Talent Pool will become the first EU-wide platform to facilitate international recruitment of jobseekers from outside of Europe, particularly for occupations facing labor shortages. While this new initiative entered into force in June 2026, the Commission is still developing the platform. It is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2027.
The EU has streamlined some of the rules and regs including;
• The Single Permit Directive makes it easier for people from outside the EU to apply for jobs, providing one single permit for the right to work and reside in the EU. The change allows holders of a valid residence permit to apply directly from the EU without having to go back to their country of origin. And it requires EU countries to decide on an application for a single permit within 90 days, including a potential labor market test.
• The EU Talent Pool is first EU-wide digital platform connecting non-EU workers with EU employers.
The rules do not apply in Denmark and Ireland.
Speaking of worker shortages … faced with a shrinking healthcare workforce and an aging population, the Dutch government has unveiled MedTech 2035, a 10-year initiative to reform hospital care and strengthen the country’s position in the global medical technology industry. The price tag is 152 million euros. The plan shifts care away from traditional labor- and capital-intensive hospital beds toward digital, home-based monitoring systems.
Philips has pledged an additional 50 million euros, according to Innovation Origins.
Can’t beat ’em, join ’em
Everyone is talking about tech sovereignty, but until there’s serious venture capital in Europe, it’s just talk.
The big news yesterday was Helsing, the Munich-based defense scale-up, announced it has raised $1.8 billion in a Series E, valuing the company at $18 billion. The round includes the biggest investment firms in The Valley, on Wall Street and in Toronto including Dragoneer Investment Group, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Disruptive, Iconiq, Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, JPMorganChase, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), General Catalyst, Plural and StepStone Group.
Exactly none is based in Europe.
Helsing builds autonomous weapons and helps Western clients connect conventional weapons to AI-enhanced networks.
Similarly, Gradium, a seven-month old French startup in voice AI just raised a 100 million seed round (that’s right, seed round), then promptly announced they were adding operations in San Francisco. Gradium’s new investors include Nvidia and FirstMark Capital in New York City.
Briefs (well, one, anyway)
We knew the end was nigh for Eindhoven-based carbon-capture startup Carbyon because so many in the original team had left. But, we didn’t know what that would look like. Turns out its’s an acquisition by Airhive, a London-based competitor. The combined operations will fall under the Airhive brand. Carbyon debuted its CO2 capture prototype last September on High Tech Campus, but it was not clear what the company would do with the captured gasses. Airhive is working on a pilot project with Coca-Cola Europacific Partners in Canada, providing low-carbon, food-grade CO2 for bottling plants.
The good news is, Airhive will put its R&D at HTCE where the new company plans to focus on the next generation of its “Cascade” technology.
