Amsterdam’s Balthazar raises €1.8M in pre-seed round to build the first OS for deep tech R&D labs

Amsterdam-based Balthazar, an AI-enabled platform that aims to reinvent how deep tech R&D labs run, has secured a total of €1.8M in a pre-seed funding round.

The Dutch company’s initial amount came from global early-stage VC Antler and various Dutch innovation funders, followed by the latest €1.2M led by CapitalT with Antler’s participation.

Bringing structure to a €250B deep tech R&D market

Founded in 2024 by Dejan Davidovikj and Konstantin Mertsalov, Balthazar addresses a significant gap in the deep tech R&D sector, which sees annual spending of over €250B to develop next-generation hardware across semiconductors, photonics, energy storage, and carbon capture technologies.

Despite this massive investment, device development still relies on fragmented systems and manual coordination. Balthazar’s platform serves as a real-time, intelligent workspace that integrates every step of the R&D workflow, allowing researchers to run and monitor experiments directly from their browsers.

The platform connects to local workstations and lab instruments, organising all prototype data in one place, while enabling users to leverage and extend their existing code base. Built on modern web technologies and scalable cloud architecture, it facilitates faster iteration, seamless collaboration, and reproducible results at scale.

“Deep tech labs are pushing the limits of science and engineering — yet still rely on tools never meant for today’s complexity,” says founder Davidovikj. “Teams run incredibly complex experiments with no shared source of truth and no system to manage the process. Balthazar gives them structure, automation, and visibility — so they can move faster and make better decisions, backed by data.”

Balthazar has supported more than 6,000 experiments and is trusted by a range of partners—from universities like TU Delft to companies in advanced semiconductors, quantum technologies, and energy storage.

Capital utilisation

Balthazar aims to accelerate product development, advance AI capabilities, and expand the team.

Eva de Mol, Founding Partner at CapitalT, says, “Balthazar solves a foundational challenge for deep tech teams: turning research chaos into coordinated progress. The team deeply understands the day-to-day problems of modern R&D labs and builds exactly the kind of infrastructure needed to enable faster and more reproducible technological breakthroughs. We’re thrilled to support them from the beginning.”