HighTechXL

Keiron Printing Technologies raised €20.7 million, and the problem behind it is worth understanding. Solder paste printing causes over 70% of all defects in electronics assembly, a market worth more than €600 billion a year. It's been broken for decades, and everyone just lived with it because nobody could fix it at the root. Keiron didn't patch it, they replaced it. Their HF2 printer swaps three machines for one digital, non-contact process, pushing first-pass yield from an industry-typical 60% to above 95%, with stencils gone entirely. That matters most for AI hardware, where components can carry up to 10,000 interconnects, a scale that breaks conventional solder printing completely. The round was co-led by Invest-NL, DeepTechXL, and @Waves Capital, with Ramphastos Investments, ATUM Ventures, Cottonwood Technology Fund, and TNO Ventures also on board. Founder Paul Rooimans called it the industry's "most expensive open secret." A failure mode everyone accepted because nobody would touch it. Congratulations to Paul and the entire Keiron team. Read the full article: https://lnkd.in/e-NQp5Rs #DeepTech #Semiconductors #AI #HardTech #Eindhoven #SeriesA #StartupEcosystem #HighTechXLKeiron John Bell | Olena van Tuijn | Earl Goetheer| Letícia Batista | Patricia de Kort | Gerlof Visser | Christos Bousis | Pieter Jan de Bree | High Tech Campus Eindhoven | ASML | TNO | Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM)

Proud alumni moment! HighTechBinders is kicking off BNR Nieuwsradio's summer podcast series spotlighting promising Dutch tech startups 🎙️ Founder Teun Wagenaar sits down to talk about how the company is developing sustainable, biobased binders that can replace fossil raw materials across a range of industrial applications, exactly the kind of deep tech impact we love to see our teams driving forward. Even better: two more TNO spin-offs, Perovion Technologies and TracXon, also feature in the series. Great to see so much Dutch high-tech innovation getting airtime this summer. Heads up: the episode is in Dutch, so if you've been putting off brushing up your taalvaardigheid, this is your sign. Trust us, it's worth the listening practice. 🎧 Tune in every Wednesday and Thursday afternoon on BNR Nieuwsradio, or catch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/enXGYF4h Congrats to Teun Wagenaar and the whole High Tech Binders team, well deserved! 👏

Big news from the portfolio. LubaLabs just made the Falling Walls Venture 100. 🙌🏼 One of the top 100 science start-ups to watch in 2026, picked from 597 nominations received by the Falling Walls Foundation Advisory Board. That's a tough room. Nominations came in from 60 countries this year. Making this list means something. 25 finalists will pitch live at the Falling Walls Science Summit on 6 November. We'll find out on 11 August if Lubalabs is one of them. Fingers crossed. And huge congrats to the whole Lubalabs team, this is well earned: Check out all 100 selected ventures here 👉https://lnkd.in/e2WRA96D #FallingWalls #FallingWallsVenture #ScienceStartups #DeepTech #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #HighTechXL Imran AKCA-AVCI | Duygu Akbulut | Earl Goetheer | Olena van Tuijn

Keep bursting your bubble. That's the line that stuck from ASML's Taking the Stand last week. 157 talents. That's how many ASML people have gone through this program since it started. Last Thursday it was their time to shine and talk about what the program actually does to you. The uncertainty hit first. "Uncertainty is part of startup life," one of them said. "Stick together in it. A decision can still be made." One talent left semiconductor for medical, on purpose, just to step out of their comfort zone. Another fought the language barrier every single day. Another realized their real job wasn't to deliver faster, it was to deliver with intention. "My ultimate goal is not just to deliver, but to deliver with intention, clearly, focused, and sustainably." Not every story was smooth. One talent admitted to running after everyone else's priorities instead of their own scope, for months, before HTXL forced the question: what are you actually here to deliver? 🚫 Learning to say no. 🆘 Learning to ask for help. 🙌 Learning that showing vulnerability is the only way people can actually support you. ✅ Learning to stop running after everyone else's problem and focus on the one that's actually yours. And one line that stuck with the whole room: "What if a program like this doesn't teach you new skills," one talent said. "What if it just makes you rediscover the parts of yourself you'd long forgotten." That's the spirit of entrepreneurship (or as a talent put it 👻 Entrepreneur 🚢 ) we keep seeing in this room. Immense respect for every founder and every ASML talent who steps into that uncertainty and stays. For a bubble worth bursting. What's the last thing that burst your bubble? #ASML #HighTechXL #DeepTech #Entrepreneurship #Eindhoven #Brainport #TalentDevelopment #Innovation Silvia Cusumano| John Bell | Pieter Jan de Bree| Bert-Jan Woertman | PeroviX| Vialign | Luper Technologies | VitalWear | LubaLabs| INNER | Avoxt| Jon King| Hossein Mardanpour | Christos Bousis | Patricia de Kort | Olena van Tuijn

We don't just build startups. Apparently, we build award winners. Last night, two of our alumni ventures, Astrape Networks and Luper Technologies, took home a Gerard & Anton Award at the 12th edition. We built with both of these teams from day one at HighTechXL. Seeing them recognized on stage, years later, still building, still growing, is exactly why we do this. Astrape Networks is rethinking the guts of the data center. The company is developing a programmable network architecture that brings together scale-up, scale-out and the interconnection of AI and HPC systems. The Astrape Networks Demo Center is now open in Belgium and you can plan a visit: https://lnkd.in/evbpBiGG Luper Technologies is cleaning the air we actually breathe. Their AirShield system strips toxic and odorous emissions out of industrial exhaust, starting with wastewater treatment plants stuck with expensive, high-carbon filtration for decades. Pilots with Dutch water boards are now turning into real deployments. Different sectors, same DNA. Deep tech, hard problems, teams who didn't stop at a good pitch deck. That's the whole point of the Gerard & Anton Awards. Twelve editions in, the community now backs 120 startups, over 90% of them still active, having raised more than €4 billion combined. Huge congratulations also to fellow winners Avendar, CoolSem Technologies, Euclyd, Photon Bridge, ATA Mute B.V., Perovion Technologies, Touchwaves and Helia Biomonitoring. Proud is an understatement. Read the full press release: https://lnkd.in/eWgafyWy Photos: IO+ NL #Brainport #DeepTech #HighTechXL #GerardAntonAwards #VentureBuilding Bert-Jan Woertman | Beatrix Bos | John Bell | Patricia de Kort | Bart Brouwers | Letícia Batista | Sam Snoeks | Olena van Tuijn | Earl Goetheer | High Tech Campus Eindhoven

A quiet stat from the new Gerard & Anton report just made our week. Since 2010, Brainport semiconductor and photonics companies have raised €908 million. That puts us 5th of 14 European chip regions, ahead of Amsterdam and Berlin, sitting next to metros ten times our size. But the number we care about most isn't the total. It's this: the report names HighTechXL as a launchpad for the next wave of photonics and networking founders. Two of our own are in it. Vialign is building right now inside our program. Interferometry on a photonic chip, sub-nanometre displacement sensing for semiconductor fabs. Working with PhotonFirst to solve wafer, reticle and bonding-head metrology.  Astrape Networks, one of our alumni, has already raised €12 million. They're building photonics-native silicon for fully optical networks, tackling the bandwidth and energy limits that electrical switching hits inside AI and hyperscale data centres. Different stage, same origin. Same bet: that Brainport's semiconductor stack, ASML, NXP Semiconductors, imec, Eindhoven University of Technology, TNO, is deep enough to keep producing companies like this, year after year. That's the venture builder model working exactly as intended. Full report from Gerard & Anton Community, BRAVENTURE and Dealroom.co: https://lnkd.in/eUJBm2sS #Brainport #DeepTech #Semiconductors #Photonics #HighTechXL #VentureBuilding John Bell | Sam Snoeks | Patricia de Kort | John Vlaming | Francesco Pessolano | Olena van Tuijn | Earl Goetheer | Letícia Batista | Joris Jansens

Looking to fund your next innovation project? Join us on 25 June 2026 for a practical workshop on subsidy opportunities, organized together with Innovencio and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. Elke Evers will share her expertise for a strong funding application and explore opportunities available to tech startups, with a special focus on the upcoming Eurostars call.   📅 25 June 2026 🕤 09:30 – 11:00 📍 Online   A great opportunity for startups, scale-ups, and innovators looking to accelerate their growth through public funding.   🔗 Register here and share in your network: Eurostars Subsidy Workshop – Fill in the form https://lnkd.in/eNCcV9YT.     #HighTechXL #Eurostars #DeepTech #Innovation #StartupFunding #RVO #GrantFunding #HighTechCampus John Bell | Joris Jansens | Robin van Scheijndel | Patricia de Kort | Gerlof Visser | Bert-Jan Woertman | PeroviX Vialign | LubaLabs | FlowVolta | Pieter Ruijssenaars | Boudewijn Docter | Koen In 't Ven

It's Hello Tomorrow week, and we're proud to be part of it in more ways than one. Earlier this week, founders, investors, and ecosystem leaders from around the world visited Brainport Eindhoven as part of the Dutch Deep Tech Tour, organized by Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM) ahead of Hello Tomorrow. Together with DeepTechXL, we welcomed the delegation to High Tech Campus Eindhoven and introduced ventures working on challenges in MedTech and Semiconductors. Salvia BioElectronics, Bambi Medical, GILBERT 🫁, SonicPrecision, TracXon, Senergetics, Aluvia Photonics, and SCIL Nanoimprint Solutions shared not only what they are building, but also why it matters. Then the conversation moved to Amsterdam. Several ventures from the HighTechXL portfolio were selected to join the Discover Dutch Deeptech delegation at Hello Tomorrow 2026, including Aircision, Avoxt, inPhocal, Keiron printing technologies , Senergetics, and Veridis. Two ventures from our current program, Vialign and PeroviX, also took the stage to pitch their innovations to the international Hello Tomorrow audience. Events like Hello Tomorrow bring global attention to deep tech and give innovators a platform to share their work. But the real credit belongs to the founders, scientists, engineers, and teams behind these ventures. 🙌They spend years developing technologies and solving difficult problems. Behind every company that gets a few minutes on stage are countless experiments, setbacks, lessons learned, and the persistence to keep going. We're proud that Hello Tomorrow is bringing the global deep-tech community together in Amsterdam. We're even prouder of the people building the technologies that give us something worth talking about. 💫 Robin van Scheijndel| Toam Jaber| John Bell| Techleap | Invest-NL | TNO | 4TU.Federation | Netherlands Enterprise Agency | City of Amsterdam | ASML | Bert-Jan Woertman | Brainport Eindhoven | Hafez Nikbakht | John Vlaming | Iza Dees |

“Europe needs to scale.” We are still buzzing from the Rise Europe Summit in Lisbon last week. Together with leading startup and scaleup hubs from across Europe, we spent three days discussing how Europe can create better conditions for founders to build, grow, and scale deep tech companies. From access to talent and capital, to stronger collaboration between ecosystems and corporates, the focus was clear: execution matters. At HighTechXL, these conversations strongly resonate with the work we do every day to support deep tech founders from breakthrough technology to venture creation. A special thank you to the Beta-i • collaborative innovation team for hosting this year’s summit and bringing together such a strong group of ecosystem builders from across Europe. As Ricardo Marvão 🇵🇹🇫🇷, Co-founder and Partner at Beta-i, said: “We believe in this long term commitment about Europe scaling its startups.” And as Luca de Angelis, CEO of TEF - Tech Europe Foundation, shared: “Our vision is that in 5 to 10 years, we will have big scaleups in Europe that can actually be European, compete in Europe, and drive us much closer to the technological frontier.” Great to have John Bell representing HighTechXL during the summit and contributing to the conversation on Europe’s innovation future. This aftermovie captures the atmosphere well 🎥 #RiseEurope #ChooseEurope #StartupEcosystem #Scaleups #Innovation #Europe Alex Ilic | Ben Mumby-Croft | Dora Handrea | Geoffroy Gérard | Helmut Schoenenberger | @Ikhlaq Sindhu | Jana Golfmann | Jean-Michel Dalle | | Leah Thompson | Lisa Ericsson | Marisa Schneider | Michael Baum | Michael Hähnle | Mikkel Sørensen | Oliver Hanisch | Pär Hedberg | Ras Lalmy | | Stefan Drüssler | Tomi Erho | Zack B. | Finia Nagel (Deuke) | Itziar Ayerbe Lasagabaster | Manuel Tânger | Vatey Uy

XL Day 2026 still feels unreal. The packed rooms. Founders stepping on stage for the first time. Discussions on startup funding, spin off creation, security, defence, and how Europe can create better conditions for deep tech companies to grow. Sometimes photos capture a moment. This time, video captures the atmosphere better. Here is a quick look back at the energy of XL Day 2026 🎥 Curious what stayed with you most after XL Day? 📸 Aftermovie by Christos Bousis Michiel Scheffer 🇪🇺 | Anke Huiskes | Aruna Subramanian | Gerlof Visser | Robin van Scheijndel | John Bell | Patricia de Kort | John Vlaming | Imran AKCA-AVCI | Aashish Mehta | John Willems | Jon King | Dessislava Nikolova | @Jon Jie | Floris Lievens | Martin Pečar | Siddharth Kalra | Joris Jansens | Earl Goetheer | Sam Snoeks | Ximena C. | Pieter Jan de Bree | Pieter Ruijssenaars | Sofia Marakis | ASML | TNO | Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM) | Philips | Bert-Jan Woertman | Boudewijn Docter | Vialign | LubaLabs | TacnIQ.ai | Keiron printing technologies | KSE Infinity Pte Ltd | MarinaChain | PeroviX | QUIKBOT | FlowVolta