Dutch Government Adds €360 Million to High-Risk Tech Fund
The Dutch government and Invest-NL are putting €360 million more into high-risk Deep Tech Fonds, taking it to €610 million, to reduce reliance on American and Chinese tech.
The Dutch government and state-backed investor Invest-NL are putting an extra €360 million into a fund for high-risk technology start-ups, as the Netherlands tries to reduce its dependence on chips and other critical technology from outside Europe. The injection takes the Deep Tech Fonds, set up in 2022, to €610 million, economic affairs minister Heleen Herbert told MPs on Thursday.
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A bigger fund, evenly shared
The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate (EZK) is adding €130 million to the fund, while Invest-NL is putting in an extra €230 million. After the top-up, both contribute €305 million. The original €250 million, launched together with Invest-NL in 2022, has largely been spent, the Financieele Dagblad reported. The €221 million invested so far has gone to 14 companies, including chip-sector firms Axelera AI and Nearfield Instruments, quantum chip maker QuantWare, photonics specialist SMART Photonics and image-sensor company Eyeo.
According to the ministry, the public investments so far have attracted almost €400 million of additional private capital.
What “deep tech” means here
The fund focuses on what the government calls “key technologies”: semiconductors, photonics (the use of light for processing information), quantum computing and artificial intelligence. These are areas where companies typically need large amounts of capital and several years before they can bring a product to market, which makes them risky bets for ordinary commercial investors.
“Deep tech companies have longer development times for their innovations, larger technological risks and often a greater need for financing,” Herbert said in a statement. “At the same time, these are exactly the companies that can make the biggest contribution to our future earning capacity, reduce dependencies and help solve major social challenges.”
Invest-NL CEO Rinke Zonneveld described the goal as “supporting more companies that are technologically innovative and of strategic importance to the Netherlands. Together with our co-investors, we can in this way make orange world champions possible.”
Why now: a Dutch and European funding gap
The extra money comes as concern grows over Dutch and European reliance on American and Chinese technology. The Jetten cabinet has placed strategic autonomy in tech high on its agenda, including its recent decision to block the takeover of DigiD operator Solvinity by US firm Kyndryl, and its earlier intervention in Chinese-owned chip maker Nexperia, which triggered a diplomatic row with Beijing.
A new report from Dutch tech lobby group Techleap, published this week, found that European deep tech companies raise between 3.4 and 4.2 times less per funding round than their American counterparts. In the Netherlands, 71 percent of first investments in such firms come from public money. Techleap is calling for specialised funds of at least €1 billion and tax incentives for private investors.
The Dutch picture is not entirely bleak. According to Techleap, Dutch deep tech companies raised around €1 billion in venture capital last year, around 41 percent of total Dutch venture capital. The challenge is keeping pace with American (and increasingly Chinese) funding levels, and stopping promising start-ups from leaving Europe in search of capital.
Where it fits
For Dutch start-up policy, the Deep Tech Fonds is one of the larger instruments aimed specifically at scaling up companies that work on technology of “strategic importance.” The fund is also one of the most concrete pieces of the cabinet’s wider start-up and scale-up policy and of the National Technology Strategy, both aimed at strengthening the country’s “earning capacity” while reducing its exposure to geopolitical shocks in semiconductors and AI.
The injection lands at a moment when the wider Dutch tech ecosystem is being pulled in several directions at once: Amsterdam is sliding down European tech rankings, the cabinet wants to limit some forms of migration and English-language education, and the country’s largest tech employer, ASML, is in the middle of a politically sensitive engagement with US billionaire Elon Musk’s Terafab project. For deep tech founders, the practical message from Thursday is simpler: there will, at least, be more state-backed capital on the table.