(Editor’s note: This post on startups and scale-ups to watch in Eindhoven is part of our Tech Tuesday series. Dispatches covers tech because so many of our highly skilled internationals are researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs.)
There have been several Eindhoven-based startups and scale-ups acquired just in the past year. The question becomes, are there new Eindhoven-based companies, or companies supported by Eindhoven VCs and venture builders, waiting in the wings to replace Accerion, Intrinsic ID and GrAI Matter Labs? Is this a healthy tech ecosystem?
Those are rhetorical questions.
On a regular basis, we see startups and scale-ups here with mind-blowing technology from atomic-level metrology (precision measurement) to medical devices to a new generation of AI at the edge. Where else in Europe can make that claim?
TechLeap’s State of Dutch Tech 2025 finds the number of startups is declining. We see no evidence of that and are not sure who, exactly, is tracking all the accelerators, venture builders and startups coming out of Dutch universities and research institutes. What we do see is more and more startups leaving for the United States because sufficient early stage funding simply isn’t available in the Netherlands or in Europe, for that matter.
In any case, we’re dedicating this EBB to those young companies – startups and scale-ups – that are on upward trajectories.
Nearfield Instruments
We could never quite get our heads around what Nearfield Instruments does. Then we got a tour of their facility in Rotterdam and we had an epiphany … this could be the next ASML, a technology so potent that every new fab in the world will have to have it. And there are going to be a lot of new fabs to keep up with the processing demand generated by artificial intelligence.
Based both in Rotterdam and at High Tech Campus Eindhoven, Nearfield uses non-destructive techniques in its multi-million euro Quadra and Audira metrology machines to analyze chip quality in 3-D, looking for flaws in the notoriously tricky and inefficient chipmaking process. In other words, every chip foundry is a potential customer, with Samsung already on board.
Nearfield raised 135 million euros last year from a syndicate of investors, including VC Walden Catalyst, based in San Francisco, and Singapore’s Temasek sovereign fund. Nearfield executives are planning for IPO in 2027, “2028 at the latest,” CEO, President and co-founder Hamed Sadeghian told Reuters recently, with expansion into the U.S. market.
Salvia BioElectronics takes another big step
Salvia is an easy choice for this list. On 17 February, the company announced their first patient in the Netherlands in addition to clinical studies in Australia and Belgium.
Salvia BioElectronics’ migraine therapy consists of two ultra-thin implants: one placed just beneath the skin of the forehead and a second placed just beneath the skin at the back of the head. The devices use electrical pulses to calm nerves that cause migraines, reliving symptoms. Patients receive an external, wearable device that allows them to activate the Salvia therapy.
The Salvia release announcing the Dutch patient cites Dr. Frank Huygen, professor of Anesthesiology at Erasmus Medical Center, who conducted the first procedure in Salvia’s Netherlands study. “Our nervous system uses electrical signals to regulate how our body moves, feels and functions. In migraine, these signals can become disrupted. Neuromodulation may help correct this and restore balance.”
Neuromodulation has also been proven successful in treating cluster headache. Neuromodulation has been used to treat other neurological issues such as Parkinson’s Disease and epilepsy.
Since 2017, Salvia’s researchers have been developing the migraine therapy in HTC 37 on High Tech Campus Eindhoven, where the company now employs 40-plus people.
If Salvia can perfect the technology, that would changes the lives of a huge number of people across the globe. Migraine is one of the most common neurological diseases worldwide, with the global prevalence of migraine being estimated to be 1.1 billion cases in 2019, according to the National Institutes of Health in Atlanta.
Salvia raised a 26 million euro Series A round back in 2020 from Panakès Partners, INKEF Capital and SHS Gesellschaft für Beteiligungsmanagement with participation from BOM Brabant Ventures, Thuja Capital and Dolby Family Ventures. In 2024, it received a 5.1 million euros “blended funding award” from EIC’s accelerator program to develop a treatment for cluster headaches.
LUMO Labs adds three portfolio companies
LUMO Labs, a venture capital firm based at High Tech Campus Eindhoven, is investing in a new level of startups.
• Scenexus, based in The Hague, specializes in enterprise software for urban planning. They provide cities and urban planners a cutting-edge Software-as-a-Service solution that generates accurate multi-faceted insights into urgent challenges and developments in urban areas. By creating digital twins of a city or region, decision makers, planners and engineers can assess the exact impact of their ideas in just minutes instead of days.
Scenexus’ secret sauce is speed.
This is from the LUMO Labs release announcing their 1.6 million euro investment:
At the heart of Scenexus’ Urban Strategy platform are powerful algorithms running on graphical processing units (GPUs) – the same processors at the center of video gaming and AI technology. The GPU implementation enables Scenexus to process thousands of calculations in parallel, achieving results up to 1,000 times faster than leading planning software on the market. This allows Scenexus’ clients to execute exponentially more projects per year by reducing the time needed to plan and develop new, effective urban concepts. Urban Strategy is multi-faceted and multi-dimensional, allowing users to view the impact of developments on various factors such as traffic, livability, resident sentiment, financial growth, safety, greenhouse gas emissions, and well-being.
Synexus was just spun out last month from TNO, the Dutch research institute.
• Amsterdam-based Surgical Reality has developed a plug & play software solution that enables surgeons to transform any pulmonary CT into a fully labelled 3D model of the whole lung within 10 minutes. Traditional surgical imaging is based on flat (2D) CT images where the surgeon mentally creates a 3D map of the patient’s anatomy. Considering the huge variation in patient anatomy, this could lead to complications, according to the LUMO Labs release.
• A pan-European consortium of LUMO Labs, Ship2B Ventures, Athos Capital and Namarel Ventures is investing a total of 3 million euros in Sycai Medical, based in Barcelona. The capital will be used for the further development and roll-out of Sycai’s AI-driven digital non-invasive medical device that detects early cancer and pre-malignant lesions in the abdomen from medical imaging. Its first clinical trial was successfully completed in 2023 and it obtained the CE mark last summer for the pancreas application.
Fast-growing Axelera AI has 25 open positions
We’ve been talking fairly regularly with Axelera AI founder Fabrizio Del Maffeo about his rapid growth. Axelera’s high-performance, low-power chips shift AI processing to low-power edge devices at small and medium-sized companies from giant data centers. Which of course increases security.
Fabrizio has always been on the record about his aggressive expansion plans for his four-year-old scale-up. Axelera has raised more than 130 million euros through Series A and Series B rounds. Today, more than 100 customers are testing its product and this number grows by five to 10 each month. We long ago lost count of total employees, but it’s approaching 200 people. Axelera AI is headquartered in the AI Innovation Center on High Tech Campus Eindhoven. It also has operations in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and the UK.
With the boom in AI, this is a company that’s always looking for top talent.
So we looked at the website and counted about 25 open positions. You can see them all here.
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
