Meet 7 Dutch startups that raised money in September
Every month, we list the investments that caught our attention the most.
Published on October 1, 2026
© Fortaegis
Team IO+ selects and features the most important news stories on innovation and technology, carefully curated by our editors.
EUCLYD raised over €200 million for its AI-ready chips
EUCLYD, an Eindhoven-based company, is building chips for the AI era and has raised more than €200 million. The company targets the speed and efficiency with which memory and compute talk to each other in chips — one of the domain's main bottlenecks. It does so by developing a combination of proprietary chips, memory architecture, and data center systems promising to improve AI chip efficiency and reduce the cost and energy consumption per token.
The investment round was led by Samsung, and joined by Somerset Capital Partners, EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund, and Innovation Industries. With this funding round, EUCLYD plans to expand its team and accelerate the development of its chips and systems.
Startup Fortaegis raises $50M for secure chips
Fortaegis raised $50 million for technology that uses the unique properties of silicon chips to secure digital networks. The startup, founded three years ago in Amsterdam, develops ultra-secure semiconductor architectures to protect critical infrastructure, AI systems, and autonomous devices.
Fortaegis’ technology exploits a fundamental property of silicon: no two chips are exactly alike. Small physical variations during manufacturing give each chip a unique digital ‘fingerprint’. The company leverages this factor to generate cryptographic keys to protect each system. The keys can change continuously and are not stored permanently, making systems harder to hack.
Morphotonics lands €40M to fix AI glasses bottleneck
Morphotonics secured a €40 million investment for its technology to manufacture AI glasses, augmented reality (AR) waveguides, and advanced photonic components. The company develops manufacturing technology that enables large-scale manufacturing of optics for smart-glasses applications.
The round sees existing investors 3M Ventures, Innovation Industries and the Brabant Development Agency (BOM) increase their commitments, while Invest-NL joins as a major new shareholder. The European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, Ernij Next and the European Investment Bank (EIB) also took part.
€4M for startup turning steel waste into battery metals
Phoenix Metals raised €4 million to build a plant to recover critical raw materials such as vanadium, iron, and magnesium from industrial waste. The plant will operate using the proprietary process developed by the Rotterdam startup, which allows it to recover minerals from steel slag, refinery residues, and maritime waste.
The company says the process can run at low temperatures and has recovery rates of up to 99% of materials. The pilot plant, located in IJmuijden, will help Phonix Metals gather data on the way to its first full-scale commercial facility.
Gravity Gardens raised €2.6 million for climate-resilient crops
Gravity Gardens landed a €2.6 million investment for its seed activation technology. The company has developed a process that treats seeds before they go into the ground, so they can establish faster and grow stronger.
Unlike conventional options available on the market, the technology is dry and chemical-free. Seed processors currently treat seeds in water and chemical compounds to activate their internal metabolic processes. These procedures are costly and hard to manage, and often yield mixed results. Gravity Gardens is trying to set a new standard.
Cocoa upcycling startup Greencovery raises €1M
Greencovery, a Wageningen-based food tech startup, has raised €1 million to scale its cocoa upcycling technology to industrial production. The company has developed a separation process that extracts valuable, low-carbon-footprint ingredients from food industry side streams.
In particular, the startup has focused on cocoa side streams. With the new funding, it will expand production of three ingredients derived from cocoa sidestreams: cocoa fiber, cocoa extract and cocoa soluble fiber.
UCANACT raises €800,000 for brain-computer communication
Utrecht-based neurotechnology startup UCANACT has secured €800,000 in pre-seed funding to develop a brain-computer interface (BCI) that translates brain signals directly into computer actions and speech. The technology helps people with severe motor impairment regain autonomy and communicate independently.
UCANACT’s technology can analyze brain activity, detect communication signals, and display them on screen. This way, users can communicate without any physical interaction. Over seven years, the system has achieved 90% accuracy for yes/no commands and more than 90% for decoding individual words. Three ongoing clinical studies are validating the results with end users.