The technology behind
the world's technology.
Brainport is home to a growing generation of startups building the technologies that enable entire industries — semiconductors, photonics, chip equipment and advanced manufacturing.
Underneath everything.
Semiconductors and photonics sit underneath AI, healthcare, energy, mobility, defence and advanced manufacturing. Where these companies get built decides who controls the supply chain for the next decade.
Brainport is one of a small number of places in Europe that can build them end-to-end.
Among Europe's top regions.
Brainport ranks fifth of fourteen European semiconductor regions. The point isn't the rank — it's that a region of 800k people sits alongside Cambridge, Paris and London on a list dominated by metros 10× its size.
Why this matters: few European regions can field this much specialised capital in chips and photonics. The cluster is dense enough to be globally legible.
Chips compound. Quarter after quarter.
Most European peers ride one or two outsized quarters and flatten. Brainport's trailing-twelve-months curve keeps bending up — AI-inference silicon and a steady cadence of photonics rounds, not a single deal.
New companies already forming.
A useful test for any cluster: is it still producing companies? The cohort founded in the last three years is the answer — an ASML spin-out, two TU/e spin-outs already past their first round, a photonic sensing team from HighTechXL, and independents founded next to the supply base.
eyeo
imec spin-out replacing the colour filters on CMOS image sensors with wafer-level nanostructures for higher sensitivity and lower power. Raised a €15M seed in 2025 and a €40M Series A in 2026 — one of the fastest-scaling deep-tech spin-outs from the region.
Invisix Measuring Systems
ASML spin-out extending Moore's law by shrinking the wavelength of illumination into the soft X-ray regime. Closed a €20M seed in June 2026 to deliver 3D metrology for next-generation logic and DRAM (GAA, CFET) where visible light has run out of resolution.
Astrape Networks
Photonics-native silicon for fully optical networks — targeting the bandwidth and energy ceiling of conventional electrical switching inside AI and hyperscale data centres.
Euclyd
Designing ultra-efficient silicon systems for foundational AI models. Early-stage but indicative: European founders choosing Eindhoven as the place to build chip companies for the AI era.
CoolSem Technologies
Advanced thermal management for high-performance lasers, RF and power devices — an enabling layer for the telecom, sensing and defence chips designed elsewhere in the cluster. Early-stage, founded next to the customers it serves.
Vialign
HighTechXL startup integrating interferometry onto a photonic chip for sub-nanometre displacement sensing in semiconductor manufacturing. Working with industry partner PhotonFirst to deliver a sensor that is precise, compact and built for fab environments — targeting wafer, reticle and bonding-head metrology.
Spin-outs from TU/e (SMART Photonics, EFFECT Photonics, Astrape Networks), from imec (eyeo), from ASML (Invisix), and independents built next to the supply base by veterans of the cluster (Axelera AI, CoolSem). HighTechXL has been a launchpad for early-stage photonics and networking teams including Astrape Networks and Vialign. Different origins, same ecosystem — a continuous cadence that few European regions can match.
The names the new generation forms around.
These are the scaleups carrying Brainport semiconductors and photonics into international markets — and quietly seeding the next cohort of founders.
Axelera AI
Spun out of Bitfury Group in 2021, with imec as a deep R&D partner and investor. Building a hardware + software platform for edge AI inference. Headquartered on the High Tech Campus, scaling toward data-centre-class AI compute with European supply-chain anchors.
SMART Photonics
TU/e spin-out and Europe's pure-play foundry for Indium Phosphide photonic integrated circuits. Supplies the laser and optical building blocks that enable scalable PIC production across telecom, datacom and sensing.
EFFECT Photonics
TU/e spin-out making vertically integrated coherent optical systems on a single chip. Acquired Apollo Photonics' coherent DSP line and II-VI's optical components, putting Eindhoven on the global coherent-optics map.
Corporates and institutes that seed the pipeline.
The companies above don't appear out of nowhere. They form on top of decades of accumulated capability — semiconductor equipment, chip design, integrated photonics, advanced packaging, materials science — concentrated in a few square kilometres around Eindhoven, Veldhoven and the High Tech Campus.
ASML
Global lithography leader. Anchors a deep supplier base in advanced mechatronics, optics and metrology that founders draw from when starting new companies.
NXP
Mixed-signal, automotive, RF and secure-identification semiconductors. Trains generations of chip designers who later seed Brainport startups.
Philips
The original deep-tech parent of the region. Continues to spin out specialised capability into independent companies serving medical, industrial and consumer markets.
imec-NL / Holst Centre
Open-innovation R&D centre for thin-film, sensors, packaging and printed electronics — a regular launchpad for startups including Axelera AI and eyeo.
PhotonDelta
National coordination and investment programme for the Dutch integrated-photonics industry, headquartered in Eindhoven. Connects foundries, designers, packagers and end-customers.
TNO — Photonic Chip Pilot Line
Under construction at the High Tech Campus: a 6-inch Indium Phosphide pilot line, part of the EU PIXEurope project, bridging European InP photonics from prototype to industrial-scale manufacturing. In June 2026 TNO and ASML announced a partnership to deploy ASML DUV and I-Line scanners inside the pilot line — combining TNO's R&D environment with ASML's lithography to scale volume production of photonic chips in Europe.
The next generation is already being built.
The technology behind the world's technology is already taking shape. Today's numbers are just a snapshot. Tomorrow's companies are already being built — and we'll be back next year to measure their progress.