(Editor’s note: This global biz briefing on Europe’s tech scene is part of Dispatches’ Tech Tuesday series. We cover tech because so many of our highly skilled internationals are founders and entrepreneurs.)
Earlier this month, we stuck our necks out and predicted that at the 10-month mark, startups and scale ups in Eindhoven have raised a total of 1 billion euros in 2026, and we were correct … sort of. If you count Nearfield Instruments, the total is 1.2 billion euros. Nearfield is headquartered in Rotterdam but has operations here on High Tech Campus. More to the point, they’re a TNO spinout, and TNO is on the campus. So, let’s award Eindhoven the win on points.
As we wrote in earlier EBBs, everything has changed. Obviously the size of raises has grown since we arrived in 2016, At that time, HighTechXL was helping startups raise a few thousand euros. Ten years later, investors are coming up with millions if you have the right idea and the right team.
Here’s the total as of 20 October:
Nearfield Instruments, (metronics) – 380 million euro Series D in June
Axelera AI, (AI at the edge) – 250 million euros in February
Euclyd, (AI infrastructure) – 225 million euros in September
RIFT, (reformed iron fuel technology) – 114 million euros in March
XIVER (microsystems manufacturing) – 80 million euros total in two rounds during 2026
Morphotonics, (photonic devices) – 40 million euros in September
VitalFluid, (sustainable fungicides) –17.2 million euros in August
Eyeo, (advanced imaging technology) – 40 million euros in May
ONWARD Medical (neuro implant) – 40.6 million euros in April
Invisix, (soft x-ray metronics) – 40 million euros in June
ShanX Medtech, (Antimicrobial susceptibility testing) – 24 million euros in January
Xeltis, (implantable technology) – 20.5 million euros in July
Smart Robotics, picking and palletizing robotics, 10 million euros in April
Xyall, (molecular pathology) – 7.6 Million euros in February
So, there you have it … 1 billion-plus! Not a lot compared to The Valley, but Eindhoven is moving in the right direction. We’ll update this with new raises when they occur.
– Terry Boyd
Orqa US awarded a $38 million contract with DOD
Orqa US has been awarded a $38 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. Orqa, the first-person view drone manufacturer founded in Croatia, has taken its tech to a new level. Following its development of a Florida plant earlier this year, the newly stamped company Orqa US has been awarded a $38 million contract by the U.S. Department of Defense. That contract is for the production of Orqa unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
In close partnership with America’s By Light, the Croatia-based firm provides its own advanced technology for unmanned aerial vehicles, while its American partner handles production and compliance with all of the strict regulatory standards in the USA. Serial production and system testing will take place at By Light’s facility in Florida, a sprawling complex which spans approximately17,000 square meters.
It’s worth mentioning that Orqa is not a company with a long history. In fact, it was only founded in late 2018. Over the past nine years, this Osijek-based startup has grown into one of the world’s leading companies for unmanned systems and FPV technology, firmly placing Croatian know-how on the map. The cherry on top came just last week, when Orqa co-
founder and CEO Srđan Kovačević was named Croatia’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2026.
Orqa US was established as a partnership between the Croatia-based Orqa and the U.S.-based firm By Light Professional IT Services LLC. The U.S. contract was secured through a competitive process under the U.S. Department of Defense’s “Drone Dominance Gauntlet II” program, which focuses on systems designed for indoor operations in a world of rapidly developing technology and as such, a quickly shifting military and civilian defense scene. Orqa US was the company selected from among nine international participants in the program. The chosen system is otherwise part of the MRM2 product suite and includes a twenty-centimeter-diameter drone for indoor use, along with Orqa’s own ground control system.
By the way, defense tech VC funding is now the fastest-growing sector in European venture capital. The State of Defence Tech 2026, produced with Resilience Media, has documented record funding, Munich’s rise, the growing role of U.S. investors, talent pipelines and procurement. In a related story yesterday, Ukraine became the first country to use a drone to extract a wounded soldier from the battlefield.
– Lauren Simmonds
Lightyear redux
We thought we’d heard the last of Lightyear, the Eindhoven-based company that went through millions of euros trying to build a solar car. Alas, they are back. Lightyear has teamed up with Volkswagen to integrate solar cells into the Mission Efficiency, an electric concept car the German carmaker developed to reduce energy consumption. Volkswagen reports the vehicle consumed an average of 6.89 kWh per 100 kilometers during a 1,278-kilometer journey from Wolfsburg to Vienna, excluding charging losses. The journey required just one charging stop.
The solar cells added range along the way. The project also set out to explore how much energy the car can generate on its own, both while driving and when parked. We still don’t see how this is a good idea anywhere but the tropics or the Sahara, but what do we know ….
Eindhoven a ‘city to watch’
Eindhoven has been selected as one of Europe’s five ‘Cities to Watch’ in the Oxford Economics Global Cities Index 2026. The report highlights the city’s strong high-tech economy, ambitious growth outlook and high quality of life, “positioning Eindhoven among Europe’s promising urban economies.”
Promising? We’re always amused by these things. Can you name another city in Europe that has the most valuable company ranked by market capitalization, (ASML), a major global chipmaker (NXP), multiple Phillips spinouts and the largest tech research campus in Europe?
Eindhoven ranks 80th worldwide in the 2026 Global Cities Index, published by independent economic advisory firm Oxford Economics. The annual index evaluates 1,000 cities across five categories: Economics, Human Capital, Quality of Life, Environment and Governance.
More notably, Eindhoven is one of just five European cities featured in the report’s Cities to Watch section, alongside Manchester, Tallinn, Toulouse and Warsaw. This selection highlights cities with dynamic economies and strong growth prospects over the coming decade.
Mistral
Paris-based Mistral, Europe’s Great White AI Hope, unveiled its ML4 model, which the company calls the “best open-weight model in the world.” “Open weight” refers to systems whose underlying workings are available for others to use and modify.
Mistral’s latest model is “on par” with the best-known closed models from the major AI companies in key areas, including “cyber defense, finance, (and) manufacturing tasks,” Mistral VP of Science Pierre Stock said in an interview with CNN.
BRIEFS
• The Tech Buzz has a good post about the battle shaping up between Elon Musk’s Starlink and the European telecoms planning to build a rival system.
From that post:
Four of Europe’s largest mobile carriers just drew a line in the sand against SpaceX’s satellite dominance. Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, and Vodafone signed a letter of intent to pursue a joint spectrum bid that would power a homegrown direct-to-device satellite network, marking the continent’s most coordinated response yet to Starlink‘s rapid expansion.
• The Baltic countries, which gave us Skype, Bolt and Wise, are starting to reclaim their earlier tech dominance. Energy company Skeleton Technologies is Estonia’s latest Unicorn. The company plans to invest more than $200 million into scaling up operations and R&D in Silicon Valley, where it will work directly with hyperscalers on power systems for AI data centers, according to the Recursive. Bloomberg has a post about the new generation of Baltic Unicorns harnessing AI.
• Yes, Italy does fabulous, complicated cars, but can they do consumer tech? The answer is, “Of course.” It’s just that we missed it. Euronews has a post about how Bending Spoons, based in Milan, has grown into a billion-dollar tech company, with such digital brands as Vimeo, Eventbrite and WeTransfer. Who knew, right?
