The European Innovation Council Fund recently shared an overview of it’s DeepTech investments so far in 2023. In the first quarter of 2023 the EIC Fund has become the largest venture capital investor in European deals measured by amount invested, and third in number of deals. 

Since its launch in 2020, the European Innovation Council Fund (EIC Fund) has approved altogether 268 investments into deep-tech companies for a total of €1.407 billion. 147 of those companies have already signed their investment agreements. These companies are pioneering start-ups that are bringing breakthrough innovations to citizens and businesses working in the field of information and communication technologies, biotechnology, healthcare, energy, space, agriculture and more.

What is a deep tech startup?

Deep tech startups or also known as knowledge-intensive startups in the academic world are companies that leverage new technologies. These startups can come directly from universities or they spun off/ out from existing companies and research organisations. Deep tech startups have high potential due to their breakthrough science thus having the potential to revolutionise the industry by creating new industry verticals; examples of these are photonics technologies which created solar-powered transportation and artificial intelligence which accelerated automatisation and processes. However, they are also characterised as capital intensive and risky due to their longer runaway to market application.

The deep technologies can be divided into two clusters, hardware and software clusters. As seen from the diagram above, these two clusters complement each other. The main difference between these two is in their development phase; technologies in the digital cluster require less time to market compared to those within the hardware cluster. Longer time to market also entails more time, risk, and capital investment.

So who’s shaking up European DeepTech? 

Vay Technology

Vay is a deep tech company based in Europe and the United States. Vay is a leading teledriving company that aims to launch a unique, affordable, and sustainable door-to-door mobility service. With its first service, Vay plans to remotely bring and remotely park electric cars for its customers.

Vay recently raised a $95m Series B funding round to become one of the highest funded startups in Europe to pursue self-driving car technology. Investors include Kinnevik, Coatue, Eurazeo, Atomico, La Famiglia and Creandum, among others.

Bit 

Bit is a research and prototyping collective run by a talented team in Amsterdam. Their aim is to fast forward tech innovation, one prototype at a time. They run innovation projects with international oreganisations to prove the value of technology by means of a ‘the younger the wiser’ mindset.

They work with large organisiations on ‘prototyping futures’ to support these companies in building new horizons for organisations, by using of robotics, software and AI.

Wevolver 

Wevolver is the platform that provides the knowledge and connections to develop better technology. Millions of engineers leverage Wevolver to stay up to date, find knowledge when they are developing products, or leverage the platform to make meaningful connections.

The knowledge on Wevolver is published by various sources: universities, tech companies, and individual community members.

For companies who do not have in-house content capabilities, they provide creators from our extensive network of writers with engineering and science backgrounds.

Wevolver is dedicated to providing high-quality information, including articles from reputable sources like the University of Michigan Robotics Institute and innovative companies such as Mouser Electronics.

Weaviate 

Weaviate is a cloud-native, real-time vector database that allows you to bring your machine-learning models to scale. There are extensions for specific use cases, such as semantic search, plugins to integrate Weaviate in any application of your choice, and a console to visualise your data.

Alexera AI 

Axelera AI delivers an AI-native game-changing hardware and software platform to accelerate artificial intelligence.

Headquartered in the AI Innovation Center of the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Axelera AI has R&D offices in Belgium, Switzerland, UK and Italy and operations in 15 European countries . Its team of experts in AI software and hardware hail from top AI firms and Fortune 500 companies.

SpliceBio

SpliceBio is a biotechnology company exploiting Protein Splicing to develop the next generation of gene therapies. Their proprietary platform is based on technology developed in the Muir Lab at Princeton University after more than 20 years of pioneering intein and protein engineering research by our co-founders. The company is backed by UCB Ventures, Ysios Capital, NEA, Gilde Healthcare, Novartis Venture Fund and Asabys Partners.

INBRAIN

INBRAIN is bringing DeepTech, MedTech and Digital tech together, decoding neural signals into breakthrough medical solutions. This team is designing a comprehensive, AI, machine learning & data-driven neural platform that empowers patients, enables personalised care and provides accurate insights to support practitioners.

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