Eindhoven-based startups that raised €1M+ in 2022

The city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands may not instantly come to mind as a high-tech powerhouse, but it is eager to establish itself as a hub for deep tech in Europe. According to research by Dealroom.co, Eindhoven is ranked #1 among the most promising research centres in the European Union, and seventh overall, after evaluating more than 200 global innovation clusters.

Due to the availability of top-notch research, talent with a university education, and patents, the Eindhoven region ranks unusually high when compared to other important worldwide growth locations.

Today we bring you a list of startups based out of Eindhoven that have raised €1M or more in funding in 2022. Certain details of these startups, such as founders’ names and the funding amount, have been sourced from Dealroom. Check out the list below.

SMART Photonics

Founder/s: Led by CEO, Johan Feenstra

Fund raised: €75M

SMART Photonics aims to improve people’s lives by introducing integrated photonics everywhere. The company has successfully manufactured over 300 generic chip designs, to date. According to SMART Photonics, Indium phosphide chips are proving to be the better choice in many applications, ranging from next-gen low-power consumption data-centres to a variety of sensing applications for structural monitoring and medical diagnostics. Besides, Integrated photonics also plays an important role in the aircraft industry, air quality monitoring, autonomous driving, and ultra-secure cryptography.

in3

Founder/s: Patrick van de Graaf, Jeroen Janssen en Jos Verkleij 

Fund raised: €40.5M

in3 provides more than 1,500 online and offline merchants with ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ payment solutions. Working with payment partners, the fintech platform offers consumers the ability to pay for purchases in three instalments at zero costs: no interest – or transaction costs and without credit registration. Since the company offers a duration of 60 days to pay in three instalments, registration in the credit registers is not required.

Ioniqa

Founder/s: Tonnis Hooghoudt

Fund raised: €30M

Ioniqa Technologies is a clean-tech spinoff from the Eindhoven University of Technology (NL), specialised in creating value out of PET waste by using its proprietary circular technology. With a cost-effective process, Ioniqa claims to close the loop for plastics, starting with PET plastics. The company has developed a process that utilises low-grade post-consumer PET to infinitely produce a feedstock that displaces virgin raw materials used in the production of polyester products. Ioniqa has also successfully demonstrated this technology in The Netherlands’ 10KTA production facility.

Axelera AI

Founder/s: Fabrizio Del Maffeo, Evangelos Eleftheriou

Fund raised: $27M

Axelera AI claims to be designing the world’s most efficient and advanced solutions for AI at the edge. With a fraction of the power consumption and cost of current AI technology, the company’s hardware and software solution would consolidate the AI processing capacity of an entire server into a single chip. The company says it will empower thousands of efficient and accessible edge AI applications and will be fully integrated with leading open-sourced AI frameworks when it launches to select customers and partners in early 2023.

Xeltis

Founder/s: –

Fund raised: €15M

Xeltis was formed through the merger of two Dutch/Swiss university spin-offs in 2006. The company has developed a polymer-based restorative device for cardiovascular treatment. The devices are made of supramolecular polymers shaped into a microstructure through a process called electrospinning,  and it allows tissue restoration. The restorative devices comprise heart valves and small diameter blood vessels for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and for hemodialysis vascular access.

InnoSIGN

Founder/s: Sigi Neerken, Paul Van de Wiel

Fund raised: €7.33M

InnoSIGN commercialises its proprietary mRNA-based OncoSIGNal pathway activity profiling technology, to revolutionise precision medicine by obtaining more insight into the mechanisms of disease. OncoSIGNal was developed by scientists at Philips Research as a breakthrough technology for quantifying cell signalling pathway activity. The software normalises and translates mRNA levels transcribed from a suite of selected genes into activity scores of the relevant signal transduction pathways.

The tests can predict how patients will respond to targeted drugs and is currently available for research-use-only, enabling research labs to run the test on conventional PCR machines in combination with the OncoSIGNal cloud-based data analysis software.

Xyall

Founder/s: Guido du Pree, Hans van Wijngaarden

Fund raised: €6M

Xyall’s technology solutions address the need for accuracy, speed and ease of use in an automated system to make the ‘most’ efficient use of existing staffing levels. The company’s Automated Tissue Dissection solution enables accurate Region of Interest determination and dissection. It eases staff’s workload while allowing users to process more cases per hour, free of cross-contamination. Xyall scans the Hematoxylin & Eosin stained slides and the dissection slides, displaying tissue samples at the right magnification. This makes Region of Interest detection easier for pathologists.

Spark-nano

Founder/s: Huib Heezen (CEO)

Fund raised: €5.5M

Spark-nano develops and supplies Spatial Atomic Layer Deposition (Spatial ALD) technology, enabling customers to build low-cost and higher-performing devices for sustainable energy applications. The devices include a new generation of electrolysers for green hydrogen production, fuel cells, batteries, and solar cells.

Micro Turbine Technology (MTT)

Founder/s: Willy Ahout (CEO)

Fund raised: €5M

Micro Turbine Technology (MTT) is a high-tech company that has created a patented micro-turbine with several uses. The first commercial application is the development of the EnerTwin, a small system for generating electricity and heat at the same time, and which is suitable for historic buildings, among other things. MTT now offers technical services for the creation of micro-turbine applications to third parties.

SmartQare

Founder/s: Reinier Vrolijk, Ronald Olie, Edmee Hamer

Fund raised: €6M

SmartQare has developed viQtor, a multisensor solution for 24-hour remote monitoring and diagnostics of risk groups. It is an affordable tool that puts people first and helps healthcare professionals to organise the care process for patients effectively and efficiently. viQtor ensures faster intervention in the event of a fall, an alert or a decline in vital values. In the future, viQtor can also predict deterioration and medical risks (such as a fall) based on smart algorithms.

Carbyon

Founder/s: Hans de Neve

Fund raised: €2.5M

Carbyon’s goal is to create affordable and scalable technology that can be used to stop climate change. Its solution first saw light at the Dutch research institute, TNO, in 2018. While working there, Hans De Neve investigated the use of thin-film technologies for novel solar PV materials. The technology of Carbyon builds upon decades of semiconductor technology developments.

The company uses a different approach compared to competing technologies: a fast swing process by means of a rotating drum that contains a material, modified to efficiently capture CO2 out of air. This fast swing process is the key to lowering the energy consumption as well as the machine cost, says the company.

Inphocal

Founder/s: Robert van Tankeren (CEO)

Fund raised: €2M

inPhocal is a deeptech company that claims to use a “unique” laser beam technology to revolutionise laser processing. The technology turns a standard laser beam into a concentric beam with a central spot. Longer focal depths and longer focal lengths are made feasible by the laser beam properties, allowing for faster print rates and wider print areas. InPhocal’s laser beam can mark on curved surfaces at rapid speed, including fresh food, cans, and bottles, which is something that existing laser beams cannot accomplish.

RIFT

Founder/s: Mark Verhagen, Vincent Seijger, Lex Scheepers

Fund raised: €2M

RIFT’s technology will allow heating to be produced using iron powder as a circular fuel with no outright CO2 emissions. This circular fuel is an environmentally friendly substitute for fossil fuels. When iron powder is burned, heat is produced, and the remaining powder, iron-oxide (also known as rust), is converted back into iron fuel, which may then be used to generate heat once more (and again and again). In order to immediately replace gas-fueled boilers and reduce annual CO2 emissions by thousands of tonnes, RIFT is developing industrial-scale boilers.

VitalFluid

Founder/s: Paul Leenders, Polo van Ooij

Fund raised: €2M

VitalFluid uses plasma technology to reduce the use of chemical pesticides and to offer a sustainable alternative to artificial fertilisers. Plasma Activated Water is produced by making use of water, air, and electricity. Ambient air is brought into the plasma phase with electrical energy and plasma-activated air is brought into contact with water. Reactive oxygen and nitrogen are dissolved into the water creating Plasma Activated Water.

The process of treating water with plasma is copied out of nature. When lightning strikes during a thunderstorm, rain and water are treated with plasma. It is one of nature’s ways to fixate nitrogen in the form of nitrate, the most important fertiliser for plants and crops.

STENTiT

Founder/s: Bart Sanders

Fund raised: 

STENTiT is a medical device spin-off company of the Dutch Eindhoven University of Technology, focusing on the development of regenerative endovascular implants. The company claims to be an emerging player in the field of regenerative medical devices, offering a breakthrough solution for cardiovascular interventions by developing first-of-its-kind endovascular implants with regenerative capacity. Using a catheter-based approach, these devices provide the ability to restore arteries without the need for invasive surgical intervention. The aim is to ultimately restore the affected blood vessel from the inside out to provide a lifelong solution.

AlphaBeats

Founder/s: Jur Vellema, Han Dirkx

Fund raised: €1.5M

AlphaBeats is a health tech venture that uses neurofeedback technology and a patented algorithm developed by Philips. The company’s technology uses music to guide athletes into a flow state, a mental state of high performance characterised by alpha brainwaves. A patented algorithm and neurofeedback technology allow the app to determine a user’s stress level.

Cellcius

Founder/s: Evert Rietdijk (CEO)

Fund raised: $1.2M
Currently, the Netherlands’ primary heating source comes from gas. However, Cellcius wants to change that by using a heat battery that harnesses heat from industrial waste. Millions of homes can be heated this way without producing extra CO2 emissions or requiring more wind turbines or solar fields. The Cellcius Heat Battery technology uses two simple and safe ingredients: salt and water.