Chips Venture Forum

This year’s Forum highlighted 18 of Europe’s most promising semiconductor companies, carefully selected from 87 high-quality applications. Representing a wide spectrum of technologies, including advanced materials, chip architectures, photonics, sensing, green manufacturing, and AI-driven microelectronics, these startups demonstrated the depth and diversity of Europe’s innovation ecosystem.

The selected companies were: 

• SpiNNcloud, represented by Matthias Lohrmann, offers brain-inspired supercomputing technology for complex, AI-driven systems. The SpiNNaker2 architecture supports dynamic sparsity in mainstream AI applications with superior energy efficiency.
• ExpectedIT, represented by Burkhard Steinmacher-Burow, is a pioneering deep tech startup to disrupt the computer industry with a breakthrough server architecture for improving workload performance and costs within datacenters.
• DIAMFAB, represented by Ivan Llaurado, aims to revolutionize power electronics & quantum sensing using semiconductor diamond built on 30 years of R&D at CNRS and protected by 8 patents.
• Aluvia Photonics, represented by Steve Stoffels, is the first PIC platform provider based on Al₂O₃, offering ultra-low loss, broad transparency, high power handling, and on-chip amplification comparable to fiber amplifiers. Their platform enables quantum, telecom, datacom, LiDAR, AR/VR, and sensing.
• Chip NanoImaging AS, represented by Jan Alfheim, is commercializing a photonic chip waveguide based wide field of view super resolution microscope (SRM) that allows high throughput and large data that redefines the limits of super resolution microscopy/nanoscopy with advanced photonic technology.
• SteerLight, represented by François Simoens, is redefining the future of 3D perception thanks to its Silicon Photonics-based 1550 nm FMCW LiDAR.
• AGATE Sensors, represented by Mikael Westerlund, is a deep-tech company pioneering a novel pixel-based, ultra-miniaturised, software-defined broadband spectral CMOS-based sensor platform, delivering nanometre-accurate spectral reconstruction in a solid-state format, enabling both measurement and imaging applications.
• VerticalCompute, represented by Sylvain Dubois, is breaking the memory wall of AI chips by developing a Vertical Integrated Memory and Compute technology delivered as chiplets.
• TiHive, represented by Hani Sherry, is offering Terahertz-on-Silicon sensing and vision solutions coupled with AI and big Data, for industrial and Space applications.
• Greenbit Technology, represented by Lauri Paal, is building proprietary heat recovery solutions, capturing the excess heat from computing. Inhouse chip, electronics and mechanics R&D and manufacturing capability.
• Lithium Lasers, represented by Alessandro Gregorio, helps customers optimize their patented GHz-burst femtosecond laser for real-world manufacturing. With unmatched control over burst shape and energy, their system boosts quality and throughput in semiconductors, packaging, and hard-to-machine materials like SiC and a variety of industrial glasses.
• NordAmps, represented by Jan Andersson, develops the next generation of nanowire transistor technology, combining unparalleled performance at high frequencies compared to existing technologies and highly scalable: Standing III-V nanowire transistors on Silicon.
• Spin-Ion Technologies, represented by Dafiné Ravelosona, develops on chip continual learning for edge AI chips.
• Comptek Solutions, represented by Vicente Calvo Alonso, provides passivation technology for III-V semiconductor devices. Their innovative surface treatment process effectively transforms the surface of III-V materials into a high-quality native crystalline oxide layer, minimizing surface defects. This achieves drastic improvement in performance and manufacturing yields of optoelectronics and power transistors.
• Wooptix, represented by José Manuel Ramos, is building semiconductor metrology equipment for 3DNAND, LOGIC, D-RAM, etc. Free-form wafer warpage systems for global and local measurements in real time for fab environment.
• NSS Water, represented by Bjorn Holmström, develops and commercialises patented Water Enhancement Technology (WET) to produce Nanopure® Water (NPW), the world’s purest water. Their modular, point-of-use systems eliminate nano-contamination above 5 nm, improving semiconductor yields while reducing water and chemical use by up to 90%.
• VoxelSensors, represented by Johannes Peeters, provides Perception-as-a-Service platform for the physical AI economy. They deliver an end-to-end solution combining ultra-low power sensing solutions with a powerful data platform, to train and deploy intelligent robotics and AR/XR wearables in the real world.
• FaradaIC Sensors, represented by Ryan Guterman, has developed Faraday-Ox®, the world’s first oxygen gas sensor on a chip. Built with MECS-Technology® (Micro-Electro-Chemical-Systems), it delivers ultra-low power, high-accuracy O2 sensing in a miniaturized, solid-state format.