€200 million can be a distraction: Euclyd on focus and agility

With a fresh capital injection of € 200 million and backing from heavyweights such as Samsung and ScaleUp Europe, Euclyd has catapulted itself into the spotlight as a standard-bearer for European chip sovereignty. But anyone who thinks the Eindhoven-based deeptech company can now sit back is mistaken. COO Douwe Groenevelt knows a hard lesson from experience: “Such an enormous sum can also become a dangerous distraction.”

Groenevelt recently moved from Datacation to Euclyd, but spent much of the past decade working as a legal expert at ASML. Why the move to Euclyd? “I’m an optimist through and through, and I love thinking big and the American ‘can-do’ mentality. I always want to do something that has a real impact. Euclyd ticks all those boxes.” For him, there is also a personal dimension: “I have an insatiable curiosity and a hunger to learn quickly. At Euclyd, I can learn from some of the most brilliant and inspiring minds about the most important and complex technology of our time. And I can contribute to its development, too, for a purpose that goes far beyond profit: enabling sovereignty in computing.”

When Euclyd recently announced its massive €200 million funding round, the international tech press showered it with superlatives. This was driven not only by the size of the investment, but above all by Euclyd’s outspoken commitment to European sovereignty. The startup’s goal is to build an exascale “token factory” that frees AI from its sky-high energy consumption. But around the boardroom table at Eindhoven’s High Tech Campus, pragmatism prevails.

D

Douwe Groenevelt

COO at Euclyd

Douwe Groenevelt is Chief Operating Officer at EUCLYD. Previously at ASML and Datacation, he is a lawyer by training, supervisory board member, investor, lecturer and AI film enthusiast.

“To the outside world, two hundred million looks like a gigantic pot of money,” says Groenevelt. “But the semiconductor industry is capital-intensive, has long lead times and requires a tightly defined, multi-year roadmap. You can’t build product A today and simply switch to B tomorrow. That is precisely why you have to guard against distraction: with so many resources, there is a temptation to take on too much at once. The biggest challenge at this stage is focus.”

Accelerating with agility instead of disappearing for two years

Does that iron discipline mean Euclyd will spend the next two years fixated on a single, rigidly defined plan? No, it does not. While chip development traditionally meant “keeping your head down and designing for two years,” the rapid advance of artificial intelligence demands flexibility.

Groenevelt points to market developments, with techniques such as quantisation, diffusion models and specialised “small models” growing rapidly. “The market is changing before your eyes. We could suddenly discover that an early version of our architecture is already ideally suited to a new market segment. That €200 million gives us the room to manoeuvre, seize opportunities more quickly and accelerate branches of our roadmap without losing sight of our main direction.”

Can Europe fund the next billion-euro phase itself?

One question occupies critics: what happens after this round? Can an ambitious chip company targeting rack-level AI systems remain independent of American and Asian financing and manufacturing infrastructure? Groenevelt remains realistic — and strikingly optimistic. “Semiconductors are, by definition, globally interconnected. We don’t rule out investors from around the world, and we work with suppliers and customers worldwide. But the idea that Europe could not itself fund a substantial share of the next capital-intensive phase is no longer accurate.”

According to Groenevelt, Europe’s funding landscape has quietly matured in recent years. “Look at initiatives such as the Scale Up Europe Fund, where billions are now in play, or at European pension funds that are slowly but surely becoming more willing to invest in higher-risk ventures. The drive to achieve strategic sovereignty is tangible. I can really see Europe becoming ready for major tech investments at an increasing pace.”

The Brainport region’s best-kept secret

For the COO, there is no doubt that Euclyd will remain firmly rooted at Eindhoven’s High Tech Campus. Even for an ASML veteran, the concentration of specialist expertise proved a revelation. “Honestly, I didn’t realise just how much talent this cluster has specifically in chip design,” he admits. “It really is world-class. There is a reason giants such as Synopsys, Cadence, Intel and GlobalFoundries are located here, a stone’s throw from one another and Eindhoven University of Technology. For our core activity - hardcore chip design - there is literally no better place in Europe.”

As it expands into complete data-centre racks, Euclyd does not rule out partnerships with other European clusters, such as Munich or Scandinavia. But the token factory's beating heart will remain in Eindhoven. “For the core of what we’re building, we can keep moving forward here for a very, very long time.”