(Editor’s note: This Eindhoven Business Briefing looking at the startup scene is part of our Tech Tuesday series. We cover startups and tech scene because so many of our highly skilled internationals are engineers and entrepreneurs.)
Let’s call it a dichotomy. Europe has incredible talent and universities, yet there’s little empirical evidence the startup ecosystem here will ever produce a Steve Jobs, a Jim Clark or a Sam Altman. A Robert Noyce, Morris Chang, Jensen Huang or Andy Grove. All those people are, or were, bare-knuckle competitors working endless hours. (Yes, we know Niklas Zennström and his Estonians did great things, but when was the last time you used Skype?)
Here, startups – Dutch startups, especially – like to take off all 12 Easter holidays, Christmas and the entire summer.
This is a comfortable place to live, which is the worst thing for anyone working to build a company in advanced technology.
Eindhoven ecosystem connector Bert-Jan Woertman recently hosted a gathering at his house, and the entrepreneurs there agreed:
One recurring theme was comfort, and how it can be a trap. “When the comfort zone starts, dreams end,” said one founder, summarizing a broader concern. The group agreed that while Dutch society is well-organized and stable, this very stability can stifle the kind of urgency and risk-taking that startups need to thrive. “In places like Ukraine, innovation is driven by necessity. Here, that necessity is often missing.”
That’s what doesn’t work all that well. Here’s what works better.
Spin-offs.
All the most successful scale-ups we’ve posted about, or worked with, were spun out of larger companies or research institutes, including TNO and the Holst Centre.
That includes:
• ASML, spun out of Philips and now the most valuable tech company in Europe.
• NXP, spun out of Philips and now the dominant chip maker for the auto industry worldwide.
• Intrinsic ID, spun out of Philips and acquired by Synopys, based in The Valley.
• Nearfield Instruments, a metrology scale-up, came out of TNO. Last year, San Francisco-based Walden Catalyst led a $135 million Series C funding round marking the largest raise for a European OR an American semiconductor fabrication equipment company in the past five years. Walden was founded by Young Son, chairman of Samsung’s Semiconductor Advisory Board, and Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel. What’s that tell ya’ ….
• Axelera AI is a Holst Centre spinout. This AI at the edge concept just keeps growing.
There are dozens of other TNO spinouts that haven’t quite made it to the rarefied world of IPOs and acquisitions, including Carbyon, AIKON Health, FononTech, LeydenJar and LionVolt. We’ve been here for nine years and exactly zero of the fastest growing startups and scale-ups came out of the Silicon Valley model of two guys in a garage. They’ve come out of research institutes or the R&D labs of giant corporations, specifically Philips.
Here’s how that works. The TNOs and Philips of the world have access to great technology and the best talent. They put them together and fund disciplined teams who are getting paid, getting them through the early days of weeding out non-performing engineers and managers and product pivots. All the things that kill conventional startups.
Then boom! They spinoff the refined technology and the tried and tested teams, creating startups and scale-ups that become tomorrow’s market leaders. The alternative is the startup with founders and teams that are too young, too green and too entitled. They know they can keep going on subsidies and indulge in what we’ve heard too many people here call “the startup lifestyle.” Which, we know from personal experience, is the worst lifestyle you can imagine … one that requires turning your back on friends and families and rolling the dice on a concept that likely will fail.
When there’s no fear of failure, all you have left is complacency, and in the tech world, complacency kills.
Axelera AI founder: ‘Silicon Valley is not a place, it’s a mindset’
If you need further proof the startup formula in Silicon Valley can’t be duplicated, here’s a missive posted by Axelera AI founder Fabrizio Del Maffeo, who is an archetypal startup guy, never stops hustling, traveling to Silicon Valley every month.
From his recent LinkedIn post:
Every trip to Silicon Valley is a chance to meet amazing people – entrepreneurs, investors, friends – and I always leave inspired. There’s something truly special about how capital, research, technology, and bold thinking all converge here. You can’t recreate this ecosystem easily. It’s not just a place – it’s a mindset.
What strikes me the most is the cultural difference in how people are taught to think. Here, learning is inductive: you experiment, observe, try things, fail, and try again. It’s hands-on, and it starts early—from school to startup life. In Europe, our approach is more deductive. We begin with theory, we analyze, we plan, we minimize risk – then, maybe, we act. This makes us cautious, which can be good … but it can also hold back bold innovation and entrepreneurship.
The American system is also structured to reward risk. There’s no safety net, which pushes people to give their best, whether they’re building a company or keeping a job. It’s a tough environment – sometimes brutally so – but one that relentlessly drives innovation. And yes, the social consequences of that are very real, especially when walking the streets of ultra-wealthy yet visibly unequal cities like San Francisco.
This is America. You can love it, you can hate it—but you definitely can’t ignore it.
Axelera AI is based in the AI Innovation Center at High Tech Campus. In March 2025, Axelera AI announced it had secured an eye-popping 61.6 million euro grant to develop its Titania AI chiplet, bringing total funding to more than $200 million.
TNO and imec launch Holst Centre Photonics Lab at HTCE
So, want to get in on the fun? Imec and TNO just launched the Holst Centre Photonics Lab, a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to integrated photonics research and development in the Netherlands. If we were young engineers or physicists, we’d apply for one of these Holst Centre careers, jump on a team and wait for it to spin out.
Anyway, the new lab in HTC 31 combines imec’s expertise in tape-out validation, on-chip laser development, system testing and application validation with TNO’s strengths in laser characterization, free- space optics and photonic chip integration.
Eyeo raises 15 million euros
Congratulations to HTCE resident eyeo on closing a 15 million euro investment round. Eyeo, based at HTC 41 with a R&D office in Leuven, Belgium, is transforming the imaging market for consumer, industrial, XR and security applications.
Eyeo’s technology drastically increases the light sensitivity of image sensors. This breakthrough unlocks picture quality, color accuracy, resolution and cost efficiency, a breakthrough for smartphones and other devices. It guides photons directly to individual pixels, unlocking full light sensitivity and color fidelity, even in the most challenging conditions.
The seed round was co-led by imec.xpand and Invest-NL. Joining the round were Qbic Fund | Venture Capital, HTGF | High-Tech Gründerfonds and Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM). The investment, supported by the European Union under the InvestEU Fund, will help eyeo continue to push the boundaries of imaging innovation.
LUMO Labs leads 5 million euro nuclivision investment round
HTCE-based LUMO Labs, HERAN Partners and imec.istart Future Fund are investing 5 million euros in nuclivision, a Ghent-based medtech startup redefining PET scan technology. Positron Emission Tomography – or PET – scans visualize cellular processes and abnormalities, but the radiotracers used come with high costs and radiation risks, limiting accessibility.
Nuclivision’s AI platform, Nuclarity, reduces radiation exposure and scan time while maintaining image quality, making cancer and Alzheimer’s disease detection faster, safer and more affordable. “Medical imaging is at an inflection point,” says Nuclivision CEO Maarten Larmuseau. “With the rapid growth within radiopharma and theranostics, the use of AI and smart software is becoming necessary to handle the increased demand for PET and SPECT scans for conditions such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.”
Nuclivision is completing regulatory approval, entering the European market immediately, followed by the U.S. market later this year.
“The completion of the regulatory approval process marks the beginning of a new growth phase for Nuclivision that is crucial for the actual deployment and impact of their technology,” says Sven Bakkes, Founding Partner at LUMO Labs. “We look forward to supporting the founders and the growing team of Nuclivision in this, of course with indispensable growth capital, but also with expertise and frameworks in the field of business operations and impact and with opening up our network.”
Read the full news release here.
Briefs:
• Astrape, which is developing a photonic switch for data centers, just raised 7.9 million euros. Eindhoven-based Astrape Networks, a Dutch deep tech startup focused on improving short-distance data network performance, has completed a 7.9 million euro seed round that includes a 2.5 million euro grant from the European Innovation Council. Astrape’s OPTINET chip eliminates intermediate nodes and their associated electron-to-light conversions, freeing up energy for server runtime and optimizing data center revenue generation potential. The round was co-led by PhotonVentures, Join Capital, and Brabant Development Agency (BOM), with participation from Shift Invest, an impact-driven Dutch VC.
• Avoxt, an Eindhoven-based hydrogen startup, just got fresh capital, but did not bother to announce the amount.
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
