Laser printing startup Keiron lands €20 M to fix chip assembly

Keiron Printing Technologies, an Eindhoven-based manufacturer of electronics-assembly equipment, has closed a €20.7 million Series A funding round, the company announced.

Keiron makes solder paste printing systems built around Laser-Induced Forward Transfer (LiFT), a laser-based, non-contact deposition method that originated from work at Eindhoven's High Tech Campus by founders John Willems and Paul Rooimans, building on research ties to Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and research institutes TNO and Holst Centre. Its flagship HF2 LiFT Printer is designed to replace the stencil printer, jet printer and automated inspection system found on a typical assembly line with a single digital platform.

The round was co-led by Invest-NL, DeepTechXL and Waves Capital, with participation from existing backers Ramphastos Investments, ATUM Ventures, Cottonwood Technology Fund and TNO Ventures. The involvement of ATUM Ventures, a Singapore-based deep-tech investor, is being read as a sign of Keiron's technology gaining traction internationally and of the company's ambitions to expand into Asia.

How Keiron overcomes solder paste

The company says solder paste printing is the leading cause of defects in printed circuit board assembly, responsible for more than 70% of failures across a global electronics assembly market it values at over €600 billion a year. Keiron claims its system lifts first-pass yield from an industry-typical 60% to above 95%, while cutting lead times, boosting uptime and speeding up line programming.

“Solder paste printing has been the industry’s most expensive open secret for decades – a failure driver on a market worth well over €600 billion a year that everyone lived with because no one could fix it. This round lets us do exactly what the market has been asking for: put the HF2 on more lines, faster, without giving up an ounce of the precision that sets LiFT precision printing apart,” said Paul Rooimans, CEO and founder of Keiron Printing Technologies. “Keiron isn’t patching a problem the industry has lived with for decades. We’re removing it, for good.”

The company points to next-generation AI hardware, where components can carry up to 10,000 interconnects, as a segment where conventional printing methods struggle and its digital process is meant to close the gap.

Growth momentum

Keiron plans to use the new capital to ramp up production, expand commercial and support operations across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific, and continue development of its next LiFT printing platforms.

The raise follows a €10 million seed round closed last year. Rooimans has previously described the Netherlands' shortage of growth-stage venture capital for deep tech as a persistent challenge, even as Keiron itself has continued to scale. Founded in 2019, the company says more than 30 systems are already on order from customers in Europe and the United States, with deliveries underway.