Chips Venture Forum 2025 Award... and the winner is Vertical Compute

Chips Venture Forum 2025: Europe’s Premier Semiconductor Startup & Investor Platform

The Chips Venture Forum 2025, an aCCCess initiative, operated by Blumorpho in collaboration with the EIC - European Innovation Council and European Commission , demonstrated Europe’s ambition to strengthen its semiconductor value chain, from R&D to manufacturing and industrial scaling.

As highlighted by Pierre Chastanet , Head of Unit - Microelectronics and Photonics Industry at European Commission and DG connect, during his opening speech, the Chips Venture Forum 2025 brought together the crème de la crème of Europe’s most innovative semiconductor companies for the final pitching session, held on 18 November at Messe Munich alongside SEMICON Europa.

With more than 165 participants, the Forum demonstrated the growing momentum behind the European Chips Act and Europe’s strategy to consolidate technological sovereignty and competitiveness in advanced microelectronics.

Showcasing Europe’s Top Semiconductor Startups

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. SteerLight, represented by François Simoens, is redefining the future of 3D perception thanks to its Silicon Photonics-based 1550 nm FMCW LiDAR.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. Spin-Ion Technologies, represented by Dafiné Ravelosona, develops on chip continual learning for edge AI chips.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. 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%.
17. 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.
18. 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.

European Deep Tech Investors and Industry Leaders Evaluate Semiconductor Startups

The Forum benefitted from a distinguished jury of investors and corporate leaders representing major semiconductor and technology funds, ensuring strong alignment between market needs, industrial strategies, and innovation potential:

Anne Lebreton-Wolf – ALW Finance & Innovation

Susanne Schorsch – Amadeus Capital Partners

Victor Acinas – Applied Materials

Helmut Gassel – Ardian (Silian Partner)

Christophe Frey – Arm

Paul Murray – Atlantic Bridge

Antoine Amade – Entegris

Alejandro Horstmann – ETF Partners

Jorg Nowack – Hitachi

Michael Engelmann – imec.xpand

José Miguel Pascual Ruiz – Indra

Juan Carlos Martín Fernández – Indra

Pierre Garnier – Jolt Capital

Bedwyr Humphreys – Lam Capital

Sarah Luppino – M Ventures

Christian Reitberger – Matterwave

Alan Bulian – Mountain X

Timo Tenhovuori – Nokia

Fabian Faul – NXP Semiconductors

Hind Beaujon – Pfeiffer Vacuum

Pieter Klinkert – Photon Ventures

Raphaël Bodin – Quantonation

Hans Brouwer – Riverside Investments

Giovanni Bologna – Santander

Katharina Westrich – Siemens

Olav Carlsen – SPRIND

David Hurley – TEL Venture Capital

Christian Claussen – Ventech

After more than 180 digital meetings since September, 126 meetings between investors and selected start-ups took place during the day, positioning the Forum as a major European platform for semiconductor investment, business development, and deep tech scale-up opportunities.

Chips Venture Forum 2025 Awards: Celebrating European Semiconductors Innovation Leaders

The Forum concluded with the Chips Venture Forum 2025 Award Ceremony, recognising companies driving Europe’s semiconductor future.

This year’s winner was Vertical Compute, represented by Sylvain Dubois, is pioneering next-generation in-memory computing architectures that merge logic and MRAM to overcome the data–compute bottleneck, enabling ultra-efficient AI and edge processing. Vertical Compute has been celebrated for its outstanding innovation and potential to shape Europe’s semiconductor landscape.

In addition, the jury awarded special mentions to startups excelling in key strategic areas.

A coup de cœur of the jury on Sustainable Semiconductors (materials, processes & metrology contributing to more sustainable manufacturing) has been given to FaradaIC Sensors represented by Ryan Guterman for their deep-tech fabless semiconductor & chemistry company miniaturising electrochemical (faradaic) gas sensors onto micro-chips, enabling ultra-compact, low-power O₂, CO and H₂ detection for high-volume IoT, medical and industrial application.

A coup de cœur of the jury for its Potential in Energy-Efficient Devices has been given to SpiNNcloud represented by Matthias Lohrmann for their brain-inspired AI-inference infrastructure delivering ultra-energy efficiency.

These recognitions highlight breakthrough technologies advancing energy efficiency, sustainable semiconductor materials, and next-generation computing architectures, which are central to Europe’s strategic ambitions under the Chips Act.

Building a Competitive and Sustainable European Semiconductor Ecosystem

The Chips Venture Forum 2025 confirms the essential role of aCCCesS, Competence Centres, and coordinated European initiatives in accelerating semiconductor innovation, scaling industrial capacity, and fostering a robust and competitive ecosystem.