The IO+ Week: A European dream meets global reality

Eindhoven’s AI-chip startup Euclyd burst into the spotlight this year with a bold promise: 100× more energy-efficient AI compute and a clean-sheet chip architecture that could finally give Europe its own Nvidia.

Founder Bernardo Kastrup didn’t hide the ambition when we interviewed him last week at the monthly Gerard & Anton Demos Pitches & Drinks event: “I want Europe to play in this field. That’s my big wish.”

But now comes the real test.

A big dream born in an attic

When AI took off in 2023, Kastrup looked around and saw the U.S. and China sprinting ahead, while Europe stayed silent. So he designed a new AI architecture from scratch, literally in his attic.

The result convinced semicon giants to join him: Peter Wennink (former ASML CEO), Federico Faggin (inventor of the first microprocessor), Atul Sinha (Silicon Hives), scientist Christof Koch, and Steven Schuurman (Elastic).

Samsung is producing the first test chips. The technology works. For a moment, Europe could believe again.

But here’s the punchline: dreams need money. Big money.

Euclyd is now raising a major funding round. And this is where the tension turns real: Europe wants Euclyd to stay European. The global capital market doesn’t care.

Kastrup says it plainly: “I can dream, but I can’t control the world.”

If the only investors willing to fund rapid scale-up come from outside Europe, what then? Does the dream survive? Or does ownership shift again?

Why this matters (more than most people realize)

AI compute is the new strategic infrastructure. If Europe loses companies like Euclyd, it loses leverage - technologically, economically, geopolitically.

This isn’t just a startup story. It’s a stress test for Europe’s ability to stay relevant in the age of AI. The question now: Can Europe keep Euclyd European? Or will the system - fast, global, capital-driven - decide otherwise?

Read (and watch) the full interview here.

A selection of other highlights from this week:

• Watt Matters in AI: Radical rethinking in an energy-hungry AI era
• NIUM’s gut-on-a-chip unlocks the future of food and health
• BarionX locates threats with drones, neutron beams, and spectral AI
• Only leather will replace leather - Qorium is all in for it
• New EU plan aims to break Chinese raw materials monopoly
• How Team CASA builds the future of sustainable living
• Perovskite solar panels: will Europe seize the opportunity now?
• ASML is once again the largest R&D investor in the Netherlands
• Eindhoven, the 2nd Dutch city with shared cars feeding energy to the grid
• Citizens’ Climate Assembly: a test of political will to cooperate
• SmartFarm Robotics beats weeds with intelligence, not herbicides
• Critical raw materials as a lever for the circular transition
• Tilburg Demos Pitches & Drinks: the power of community innovation

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