In this episode, we sit down with Keith Sequeira, Head of the European Innovation Council Unit at the European Commission, during the Scale 100 Forum in Athens, Greece. Keith shares insights into the challenges and opportunities for European scale-ups, highlighting the role of the EIC Scaling Club in closing the scale-up gap. He discusses Europe's …

Current state-of-the-art hardware is not optimised for machine learning, and both academic and private sector research is already leading to new designs. At the same time, the need for more time- and energy-efficient machine-learning hardware is increasing as more consumers and companies want access to machine-learning applications. The EU has the …

The copper market has recently been showing unusual instability. New EU legislation, though not always directly related, seems to be having a significant impact on copper prices. This is the case for the Chips Act and the Critical Raw Materials Act - designed to make EU industry more resilient by improving strategic autonomy - but also for laws con…

Electrification is gaining momentum across many sectors, including transport, buildings and industry, driven by the EU's climate ambition and security of supply. As the cost of renewable energy technologies like solar and wind continues to fall, electrification presents an opportunity to reshape the European economy, enhancing competitiveness and p…

Exposure to 'forever chemicals', air pollution, stress and many other factors depends on where a person lives and their lifestyle choices. These exposures combine over the course of a lifetime, affecting human biology and health. The 'exposome' concept offers a framework for understanding and analysing this complex reality, and ultimately for infor…

At the recent EIC Summit, we caught up with Jean-David Malo, Director of EISMEA, the European Commission’s executive agency for the European Innovation Council and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It was a timely encounter, coinciding with the release of the EIC Impact Report 2023, which highlighted that the total value of the overall por…

The EIC Scaling Club team sat down with Fabrizio Del Maffeo on the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 Europe event in Paris. As the co-founder and CEO of Axelera AI, Del Maffeo kicked off the interview pitching his company as a 'small, fast-growing Nvidia'. That's intriguing enough on its own, but the entrepreneur of course told us a bit m…

Dr. Christian Nagel is a co-founder and partner of Earlybird, a technology investment powerhouse with more than €2 billion under management. Founded in 1997, Earlybird invests in all development and growth phases of tech companies, and has nestled itself among the largest and most experienced venture investors operating in Europe today. We caught u…

Amadeus Capital Partners has been investing in technology-enabled products and services for nearly three decades. Founded by Anne Glover and Hermann Hauser in 1997, Amadeus has backed more than 190 companies and raised over $1 billion for investment to date. When we had a chance to sit down with Anne on the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth …

At the recent EIT Summit in Brussels, we sat down with the organisation's Director, Martin Kern, to discuss what's cooking over at the European Institute of Innovation & Technology. Kern, who's been part of the EIT leadership for almost a decade after a long career stint at the European Commission, told us more about the EIT Knowledge and Innovatio…

The European automotive industry is striving to adapt to market changes driven by the dual green and digital transition. Electrification has become the main strategy for reducing CO2 emissions, especially in urban traffic. At the same time, the average size and weight of cars have greatly increased. Big electric cars are the trend, but are they rea…

On the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 Europe event, we caught up with Jean Schmitt, Managing Partner at Jolt Capital, a growth capital investor in European B2B deep tech companies. Having been part of the predecessor programme of the EIC Scaling Club, Jean shared his views on the evolving deep tech scale-up creation and financing lands…

Azeem Azhar has had a rich career as a journalist, entrepreneur, author, speaker, analyst, consultant, but now bills himself as an 'independent academic'. These days, he's perhaps best known for Exponential View, which offers weekly deep dives on AI and breakthrough technologies to a vast audience of investors, C-suite execs and global leaders who …

We recently attend the EIT Summit in Brussels, where we had a chance to catch up with Maria Tsavachidis, CEO of EIT Urban Mobility, one of the organisation's so-called KICs. What is a KIC, you ask? As the EIT explains on its website, the acronym stands for "Knowledge and Innovation Communities" and they are essentially Europe-wide networks centred …

We had a very interesting conversation with the co-founder and CEO of clean energy scale-up Proxima Fusion at the recent DLD Conference in Munich, and fortunately for you we recorded it! Have a listen to this interview with Francesco Sciortino, whose deep tech company aims to build an entirely new generation of fusion power plants, using QI stellar…

On the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 event in Paris, we recorded a short but sweet interview with Jennifer Schenker, founder and editor-in-chief of The Innovator, which she describes as a "pan-European publication with global aspirations". Having covered the European technology sector for 30+ years, the veteran journalist started The …

On the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 Europe event in Paris, we had a chance to sit down with Timo Toikkanen, an early investor and advisor to, and these days chief executive officer of Finland-based professional mixed reality company Varjo. Toikannen talks about the origins and early, R&D-focussed years of the deep tech scale-up, less…

We jumped at the opportunity to sit down with Jennifer Webb, an Investment Director at Swisscom Ventures who leads investments in sustainable technologies. She joined from LGT Lightrock in London where she spent five years building the innovative sustainable technology investment vehicle with investments in B2B SaaS, healthcare and education. On th…

Deep tech company Soter Analytics was started in 2016 to reduce workplace ergonomic injuries in warehouses and factories, drive-down claims costs, boost productivity and improve worker retention using smart safety wearables and AI-driven technologies. At the most recent OTB Ventures Summit, we caught up with the company's CEO, Matthew Hart, who exp…

Managed by the European Investment Fund, the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI) has allocated nearly €1 billion to four strategic funds in its first year, including Atomico and Keensight Capital, in an effort to propel forward the EU tech sector with potential leverage of up to €6 billion. The ETCI fund-of-funds was inaugurated in February 2…

France-based deep tech company Cailabs is a global leader when it comes to designing, manufacturing and selling specialised photonics solutions for free-space transmission, industrial lasers, local area networks and telecommunications, among other use cases. An innovator in the world of 'complex light shaping', the high tech scale-up recently close…

Robot applications, including 'collaborative robots' - cobots - designed to collaborate with humans, are in high demand, with sales and installation figures constantly on the rise. However, it is necessary to analyse the risks and opportunities of this technology and its possible social, economic, and ethical impacts. The following study presents t…

We sat down with Jan Goetz, a quantum physicist and co-founding CEO of IQM Quantum Computers, building next-generation quantum computers right here in Europe. Goetz, who also served as an EIC Board Member in the past and recently - and graciously - accepted to become an EIC Scaling Club Council member, was kind enough to take time out of his day at…

Generative artificial intelligence applications, such as ChatGPT, are powered through complex learning processes by comprehensive datasets of – potentially dubious – human-created content. There are concerns that such tools could develop consciousness and spark emergent behaviour that is, by definition, unpredictable and therefore potentially unsaf…

In recent times, the issue of space traffic has become a priority for the European Space Agency because of the threat posed by the increasing amount of debris orbiting the Earth. Decommissioned or abandoned satellites, parts of rocket boosters and solar panels, and even simple nuts and bolts are orbiting hundreds of kilometres above our planet and …

The EU depends on imported fossil fuels (gas, oil and coal) for about 56 % of its energy needs (gross energy consumption), which in 2021 represented an energy bill of around EUR 300 billion. The domestic production of renewable energy sources has increased significantly in recent years to 22 % of total demand. The European Union can aspire to achie…

We interviewed Rafal Modrzewski, co-founder and CEO of ICEYE, a Finland-based micro-satellite manufacturer, at the recent OTB Ventures Summit in Poland. Founded in 2014 and backed by the EIC along the way, ICEYE essentially provides persistent monitoring capabilities for any location on earth (even at night and when it's cloudy). Owning the world’s…

We caught up with Adam Niewinski, a partner at OTB Ventures, a Poland-based investment firm that backs deep tech startups and scale-ups from across Europe, particularly in the CEE region. The VC firm is investing primarily in four sectors, namely AI and automation, space tech, fintech infrastructure and cybersecurity. Check out our interview to lea…

Droughts and water scarcity are no longer rare or extreme events in Europe. About 20 % of the European territory and 30 % of Europeans are affected by water stress, especially in Southern Europe but also around some river basins in Western and Central Europe. And climate change will only make matters worse, increasing the frequency of extreme event…

Diets tailored to our individual characteristics could bring about health benefits but require data on our most personal features, such as our DNA. The promises are many, but so are open questions about the interactions between genes, nutrients, environment and health, and the role of socioeconomic factors behind our food choices. Governance of pre…

Recent events have multiplied concerns about potential fragmentation of the internet into a multitude of non-interoperable and disconnected 'splinternets'. Composed of thousands of compatible autonomous systems, the internet is by definition technically divided. Yet, the internet was also designed to be an open and global technical infrastructure. …

The EIC Scaling Club team had a great chat with Ana Maiques, co-founder and CEO of Neuroelectrics a Barcelona-based deep tech company that produces devices to stimulate and treat the brain. Founded in 2011, it is a spin-off of Starlab Neuroscience Research which was established in 2000. Ana was nominated by IESE as one of the most influential entre…

The EIC Scaling Club touched base with Svilen Rangelov, co-founder and chief executive officer of Bulgarian deep tech company Dronamics, which is building the world's first cargo drone airline. In 2022, Dronamics was awarded a €2.5 million grant by the European Commission under the EIC Accelerator program, and secured a license to operate in Europe…

Most rare diseases are incurable. Biosensors are a technology that, driven by continuous advances in artificial intelligence, can help disease detection, lower the cost of novel therapies, replace placebo groups in clinical trials and foster patient-centred, personalised (e)-medicine. - Original publication on the EP Think Tank website - Subscripti…

To reach the Paris Agreement objective of keeping the global temperature increase well below 2°C, the EU must consider every possible technology to decarbonise its energy production. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers our sun and we can recreate it on Earth. However, even if we overcome the considerable engineering challenges of designing a …

Open strategic autonomy ensures the capacity to cope alone if necessary but without ruling out cooperation whenever possible. It relies on foresight to identify threats and ensures resilience by anticipating the required responses. Can the resulting preparedness also prevent crises (or dissuade others from creating them) by normalising internally s…