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Quote of the day: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood” - Marie Sklodowska-Curie (Scientist, two times Noble laureate).

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Everyone is talking about AI applications. Far fewer are talking about the infrastructure making them possible. But that lower layer - semiconductors, compute, industrial tooling, advanced manufacturing - is strategic right now for competitiveness.

This, happens at the same time as European DeepTech funding keeps rising.

The interesting part is that, precisely for the components needed for compute, this no longer feels like a niche “chip industry” story. The companies that win the next decade will not just build better software - they will build on top of better infrastructure, better supply chains, better economics of compute, and better access to industrial bottlenecks.

According to the 2026 European Deeptech Report, Europe’s VC-backed deeptech sector is now worth $690 billion, and deeptech captured a record 32% of all European VC investment in 2025, with total funding reaching $20.3 billion. Just as importantly, the report highlights Future of Compute as the fastest-growing segment - a strong signal that the next strategic layer of value creation may sit deeper in the stack than most people assumed.

That matters because it changes the conversation, cause Europe already has genuine assets in DeepTech and must double down on those.

Semiconductors sit underneath nearly everything people now describe as “the future”: AI, defence, robotics, industrial automation, cloud infrastructure, mobility, energy systems, medical devices. That is exactly why the European Commission does not frame chips as just another industry vertical. Under the European Chip Act, semiconductors are treated as a matter of resilience, reduced external dependency, and technological sovereignty, with the EU aiming to double its global market share in semiconductors to 20%.

That is what makes this moment so interesting. Chips are no longer just components in the background. They are becoming part of the strategic architecture of growth and technology sovereignty. The question is no longer only who builds the best products on top of AI. It is increasingly who has access to the infrastructure layer beneath it - and who controls the bottlenecks.

Gartner now forecasts global semiconductor revenue will exceed $1.3 trillion in 2026, up 64% year over year, which it describes as the strongest growth the industry has seen in the last two decades. It also expects AI semiconductors to represent 30% of total semiconductor revenue in 2026. That is a remarkable figure. It means the AI boom is no longer just visible in software budgets or cloud spending - it is reshaping the physical infrastructure layer itself.

👉 We see the same story in company results. TSMC reported $35.9 billion of revenue in Q1 2026, above its own guidance, and guided Q2 revenue to $39.0 billion to $40.2 billion.

👉 ASML, one of Europe’s most strategically important technology companies, reported €8.8 billion in Q1 2026 net sales and now expects €36 billion to €40 billion in full-year 2026 net sales. In its own words, the growth outlook is being driven by ongoing AI-related infrastructure investments, with customers increasing their short- and medium-term demand.

Europe is not the center of leading-edge chip fabrication, or base models. But leadership does not always mean total dominance. DeepTech is not built only on speed or software distribution. It is built on precision, technical depth, manufacturing integration, and longer-term defensibility. In a world obsessed with the application layer, Europe may still have an edge in some of the layers beneath it.

Europe’s DeepTech story is not appearing out of nowhere. According to Walden Catalyst, the region is home to 30% of the world’s top deeptech universities, produces twice as many science and engineering graduates as the US, and since 2015, one-third of its deeptech startups have emerged from research spinouts -especially in fields like photonics, quantum technologies, and advanced computing. In other words, this is not only a capital story. It is also a capability story. And the segment is resilient to market shifts.

So Europe is not short on innovation. The bigger problem is value capture. Atomico argues that while Europe now generates 17% of new global enterprise value, it captures only 10% of global exit value - a gap that helps explain why the region so often builds important companies but does not always keep the long-term rewards. Their example is DeepMind: founded in London, sold early, and ultimately becoming part of a much larger value creation story that accrued primarily to Alphabet rather than to Europe. It is a reminder that Europe’s challenge is no longer only to produce world-class companies, but to scale them, finance them, and retain more of the upside they create.

Hence, the more difficult question is not whether Europe can generate DeepTech companies. It clearly can. The harder question is whether it can scale and retain them. Walden estimates a $4B to $24B annual growth-stage funding shortfall, says 70% of late-stage capital comes from non-European investors, and notes that more than 80% of exits are driven by M&A.

There’s still the debate of whether software would eat everything. But we also should look lower down the stack. Not because software stops mattering. But because the real scarcity is moving toward chips, compute, infrastructure, and the systems that make the rest of the digital economy possible.

Anne Boden is the founder and former CEO of Starling Bank, widely recognised as the first woman to found a British bank. She has become one of Europe’s best-known fintech entrepreneurs, building Starling into one of the UK’s leading digital banks and more recently shifting her focus toward AI through her new venture, AI By Boden.

👉 Find more about her here!

Madrid-based Seaya has launched Seaya Growth Tech Fund I, a pan-European growth vehicle targeting up to €1B, anchored by a €300M commitment from the European Investment Fund. The fund will invest in later-stage European companies across applied AI, deep tech, fintech, climate solutions, and commerce, with the goal of addressing Europe’s growth-stage funding gap and helping scale local tech leaders into global champions.

👉 Find more here!

Copenhagen-based Kompas VC has reached the final close of its second fund at €160M, adding Danish philanthropic organization Realdania at the final close alongside returning backer VKR Holding. The firm had previously announced a €150M first close in 2025 and now manages around €300M across two funds.

👉 Find more here!

Paris-based private equity firm Abenex has completed the first closing of its new Industries 9.0 Fund, with commitments already exceeding 50% of its €150M target. The Article 9 strategy is focused on industrial SMEs in France, Italy and Benelux, targeting companies valued at up to €60M with equity tickets ranging from €5M to €20M.

👉 Find more here!

Helsinki-based Nordic Science Investments (NSI) is staying active after Taaleri acquired a 51% majority stake in the firm earlier this month, a move designed to expand Taaleri into early-stage, research-driven venture capital. NSI has now led a €450K pre-seed round in GlobeVAC, a University of Helsinki spinout developing cellulose-based technology to stabilize vaccines and biologics at room temperature.

👉 Find more here!

Industry: Biotech / Therapeutics | Location: 🇳🇱 Netherlands | Funding: €17M

Utrecht-based Laigo Bio, co-founded by Madelon Maurice, has raised €17 million in a round led by Biovance Capital to advance its therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases.

👉 Read more here.

Industry: ClimateTech / Textile Recycling | Location: 🇸🇪 Sweden | Funding: €10M

Stockholm-based Renasens, founded by Jade Abir Bouledjouidja, has raised €10 million in a round led by Extantia to scale its CO₂-based textile recycling technology across Europe.

👉 Read more here.

Industry: HealthTech / Neurotechnology | Location: 🇫🇮 Finland | Funding: $1.9M

Finland-based Audicin, co-founded by Laura Avonius and Dr. Victoria Williamson, has secured $1.9 million in funding led by private investors, with backing from Petteri Lahtela and Virpi Tuomivaara. The company is working to commercialise its sleep headband, which uses nervous-system-regulating neurotechnology.

👉 Read more here.

Industry: Semiconductors / DeepTech | Location: 🇳🇴 Norway | Funding: $40M

Norwegian Lace Lithography, co-founded by Bodil Holst, has raised $40 million in a round led by Atomico for its chipmaking equipment startup.

👉 Read more here.

Fraunhofer HHI is opening two commercially ready research areas to startup teams through its venture lab, Silicon Allee. Selected founders will be able to build inside the institute, with access to patents, labs and researchers, while being employed by Fraunhofer HHI for 12 months, with three salaries covered by the institute.

🔬 The model is particularly founder-friendly: no upfront licensing fees, and around 10% virtual equity only converts if the startup raises €1M+.

🚀 The two current focus areas are Trustworthy, Transparent AI - covering explainability, robustness and EU AI Act-relevant use cases - and Photorealistic 3D with Gaussian Splatting, with applications across AR, robotics and industrial environments.

Rather than a traditional accelerator, this is positioned as a research-to-startup pathway embedded within one of Europe’s leading applied research institutes.

Bringing together 10,000 founders, investors, operators and creators for three days at the intersection of tech, startups and culture. 🇬🇷🚀 The lineup includes voices from ElevenLabs, Index Ventures, Sequoia, Atomico, Balderton, Accel, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, alongside founders from Bolt, Deel, Fuse Energy and Runway.

🌆 Expect 70+ side events across the city, curated 1:1 meetings, and a chance to connect with some of the most relevant people shaping Europe’s startup ecosystem.

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Philippe Tibi’s message is simple: Europe does not have time to wait for structural reforms to solve its startup funding gap. Instead, governments should push institutional capital into venture now, or risk seeing the continent’s most strategic startups financed - and ultimately shaped - from outside Europe.

👉 Read more here.

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