Brainport semicon is moving industrial strength into new ventures
After snapshots for Healthtech and Energy, Matthijs Bulsink has now analysed the Brainport Semicon Ecosystem.
Published on June 30, 2026
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Commissioned by the Gerard & Anton Foundation and Braventure, data analyst Matthijs Bulsink analysed Brainport's role in 3 crucial tech ecosystems: healthtech, energy, and semicon. Using Dealroom data, Bulsink took a deep dive into Brainport's strengths and compared them to those of other regions.
Of the three Brainport ecosystems examined in this series, semiconductors may appear to need the least introduction. Healthtech (the first article in this series) is building towards scale. Energy (the second one) is moving from promising concepts to installations that must prove themselves in the real world. Semiconductors, meanwhile, already sit at the centre of Brainport’s international identity. ASML is one of the most important technology companies in the world. NXP, Philips, TNO, imec-NL, Holst Centre and a dense network of suppliers, specialists and researchers have given the region decades of accumulated expertise in chips, optics, precision engineering and advanced manufacturing.
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Yet that industrial legacy is only part of the story.
This new Gerard & Anton and Braventure snapshot shows that Brainport is not simply home to established semiconductor giants. It is also producing a new generation of companies building the technologies around the next wave of computing: AI inference chips, photonic integrated circuits, optical networking, semiconductor metrology, image sensors and thermal management.
The study puts €908 million in semiconductor and photonics funding in the Brainport region since 2010. But the more revealing signal is the steady stream of companies emerging around AI hardware, photonics, chip manufacturing and metrology.
Since 2010, semiconductor and photonics companies in the Brainport region have raised €908 million. In 2026 alone, the total already stood at €343 million at the time of the snapshot. This is without the recent €330 million for Nearfield Instruments: although the company has strong roots and a presence in Brainport Eindhoven, it is officially registered in Rotterdam.
Among fourteen European semiconductor regions, Brainport ranks fifth in capital raised over that period, behind Cambridge, Paris, Rotterdam–The Hague (with Nearfield) and London, but ahead of established technology centres including Grenoble, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Berlin and Dresden.
© Matthijs Bulsink / Gerard & Anton Foundation / Braventure
That ranking is useful, not because Eindhoven should be judged by a league table, but because it makes one thing clear: a region of roughly 800,000 people has become visible in a European semiconductor landscape otherwise dominated by much larger metropolitan areas.
More than an ASML story
The temptation is to view every Brainport chip company through the lens of ASML. That is understandable. The Veldhoven-based lithography giant anchors an extraordinary supply chain in optics, mechatronics, software, materials science, metrology and precision manufacturing.
But the most interesting finding in the new overview is how widely the region’s semiconductor capabilities are now being translated into independent ventures.
Axelera AI has become one of Europe’s most visible AI chip companies, developing hardware and software for efficient AI inference at the edge and in data-centre-class applications. SMART Photonics has established itself as Europe’s pure-play foundry for indium phosphide photonic integrated circuits. EFFECT Photonics develops coherent optical systems that help move enormous volumes of data through telecom and data-centre networks.
These are no longer early experiments. They are companies operating in international markets, raising significant capital and creating the kind of experience from which new founders, engineers and specialist suppliers can emerge.
That matters because semiconductor ecosystems do not grow through isolated startups. They compound. A chip designer leaves a scale-up and starts a new company. A researcher sees a bottleneck in a production process. A supplier discovers that a technology developed for one customer can solve a problem for an entire market. Over time, expertise that once sat inside a large company becomes the starting point for something new.
Brainport is beginning to show exactly that pattern.
Most European peers ride one or two outsized quarters and flatten. Brainport's trailing-twelve-months curve keeps bending up — AI-inference silicon and a steady cadence of photonics rounds, not a single deal. © Matthijs Bulsink / Gerard & Anton Foundation / Braventure
The next companies are already taking shape
The newest cohort is remarkably diverse, but the underlying logic is consistent: each company addresses a difficult technical bottleneck that becomes more urgent as chips become smaller, AI models larger and data traffic more energy-intensive.
eyeo, an imec spin-out and former Gerard & Anton award winner, is working on a different type of image sensor. Instead of using conventional colour filters that discard much of the incoming light, its technology uses wafer-level nanostructures to split light more efficiently. The company has raised €55 million to bring the technology towards commercial use in cameras for smartphones, industrial systems, extended reality and smart infrastructure.
Invisix Measuring Systems, an ASML spin-out, is focused on a very different challenge: how to inspect the increasingly complex three-dimensional structures inside advanced chips. As logic and memory devices move towards stacked architectures, conventional optical tools can no longer see every critical detail. Invisix is developing soft X-ray metrology for that next generation of chip manufacturing and raised a €20 million seed round in June.
Astrape Networks is applying photonics to the bandwidth and energy limits inside AI and hyperscale data centres. CoolSem Technologies is tackling the growing thermal challenge around high-performance lasers, radio-frequency and power devices. Euclyd is designing ultra-efficient silicon systems for foundational AI models.
And then there is Vialign, a new HighTechXL venture developing photonic displacement sensing for semiconductor manufacturing. Its ambition may sound specialised, but that is precisely the point. In a modern fab, the ability to measure movement at the sub-nanometre level can determine whether a wafer, reticle or bonding process performs as intended.
Taken together, these companies show that Brainport’s semiconductor ecosystem is not limited to designing chips. It is increasingly active across the entire enabling layer around them: sensing, cooling, inspection, light, packaging, data transport and AI compute.
Industrial depth is the real advantage
A semiconductor startup needs more than a good architecture or a clever component. It needs access to rare engineering talent, specialised equipment, research partners, suppliers, test environments, manufacturing knowledge and, eventually, demanding first customers.
That is where Brainport has a considerable advantage.
ASML provides a global anchor in lithography. NXP has trained generations of chip designers in mixed-signal, automotive, radio-frequency and secure-identification semiconductors. Philips remains part of the region’s deep-tech heritage in sensing and industrial innovation. At High Tech Campus Eindhoven, imec-NL and Holst Centre offer expertise in sensors, thin films, advanced packaging and printed electronics. PhotonDelta coordinates the Dutch integrated-photonics ecosystem, connecting designers, foundries, packagers and customers.
These organisations do not automatically create successful startups. But they create the conditions in which difficult companies can be built.
That distinction is important. Europe does not lack semiconductor research. It has no shortage of scientific publications, prototypes or promising technologies. The real challenge is turning those breakthroughs into repeatable production, globally competitive companies and supply chains that remain rooted in Europe.
For photonics in particular, manufacturing is becoming the next decisive step.
Semiconductors & Photonics in Brainport
An ecosystem that keeps generating new semiconductor and photonics companies from corporates, research institutes and TU/e. Read the full report here.
From promising photonics to production capacity
The new TNO Photonic Chip Pilot Line at High Tech Campus Eindhoven is one of the clearest examples of that transition. The facility, now under construction, is intended to help bridge the gap between photonic-chip prototypes and industrial-scale production on six-inch indium phosphide wafers.
In June, TNO and ASML announced a partnership around the pilot line. ASML will deploy DUV and I-Line lithography equipment in the shared environment, combining its experience in lithography, process control and metrology with TNO’s research and development infrastructure.
The significance goes beyond one facility.
Integrated photonics has long been one of the Netherlands’ most promising deep-tech fields. Companies can design chips that use light rather than electrons to transmit, sense or process information. But producing those chips reliably, at volume and with predictable quality is a different challenge entirely.
The pilot line is designed to help create that missing manufacturing layer. It gives companies a place to prove processes, improve yield, develop packaging routes and move closer to production conditions that international customers will recognise.
For Brainport, that is a strategic asset. It means the region can increasingly offer not only ideas and research talent, but also a route from architecture to prototype to manufacturable product.
It's worth noting that the €908 million comparison excludes grants and post-IPO/SPAC funding, and that pure-photonics companies outside Dealroom’s semiconductor tag are not fully captured, so the photonics contribution may be understated.
The foundation is already there
The healthtech and energy ecosystems described earlier in this series are both looking for ways to turn individual breakthroughs into durable, scalable industries.
Semiconductors start from a different position. The industrial backbone is already exceptionally strong. Brainport has global companies, specialised suppliers, research institutes, talent pipelines and a reputation that reaches far beyond the Netherlands.
The question is whether that backbone can continue to generate new independent companies quickly enough. The early evidence is encouraging. The region’s funding curve is rising. New spin-outs are emerging from ASML, imec, TU/e and HighTechXL. Young companies are targeting some of the most urgent bottlenecks in AI, advanced manufacturing, optical networking and chip production. And new infrastructure is being built to help photonics move from laboratory promise to industrial reality.
That makes the semiconductor story more than a story about ASML’s gravitational pull.
It is about whether Brainport can turn decades of accumulated capability into a continuous pipeline of companies that build the technology behind the world’s technology. The next generation is already being formed around that ambition.