In this episode, we sit down with Keith Sequeira, Head of the European Innovation Council Unit at the European Commission, during the Scale 100 Forum in Athens, Greece. Keith shares insights into the challenges and opportunities for European scale-ups, highlighting the role of the EIC Scaling Club in closing the scale-up gap. He discusses Europe's …

At the recent EIC Summit, we caught up with Jean-David Malo, Director of EISMEA, the European Commission’s executive agency for the European Innovation Council and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It was a timely encounter, coinciding with the release of the EIC Impact Report 2023, which highlighted that the total value of the overall por…

The EIC Scaling Club team sat down with Fabrizio Del Maffeo on the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 Europe event in Paris. As the co-founder and CEO of Axelera AI, Del Maffeo kicked off the interview pitching his company as a 'small, fast-growing Nvidia'. That's intriguing enough on its own, but the entrepreneur of course told us a bit m…

Dr. Christian Nagel is a co-founder and partner of Earlybird, a technology investment powerhouse with more than €2 billion under management. Founded in 1997, Earlybird invests in all development and growth phases of tech companies, and has nestled itself among the largest and most experienced venture investors operating in Europe today. We caught u…

Amadeus Capital Partners has been investing in technology-enabled products and services for nearly three decades. Founded by Anne Glover and Hermann Hauser in 1997, Amadeus has backed more than 190 companies and raised over $1 billion for investment to date. When we had a chance to sit down with Anne on the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth …

At the recent EIT Summit in Brussels, we sat down with the organisation's Director, Martin Kern, to discuss what's cooking over at the European Institute of Innovation & Technology. Kern, who's been part of the EIT leadership for almost a decade after a long career stint at the European Commission, told us more about the EIT Knowledge and Innovatio…

On the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 Europe event, we caught up with Jean Schmitt, Managing Partner at Jolt Capital, a growth capital investor in European B2B deep tech companies. Having been part of the predecessor programme of the EIC Scaling Club, Jean shared his views on the evolving deep tech scale-up creation and financing lands…

Azeem Azhar has had a rich career as a journalist, entrepreneur, author, speaker, analyst, consultant, but now bills himself as an 'independent academic'. These days, he's perhaps best known for Exponential View, which offers weekly deep dives on AI and breakthrough technologies to a vast audience of investors, C-suite execs and global leaders who …

We recently attend the EIT Summit in Brussels, where we had a chance to catch up with Maria Tsavachidis, CEO of EIT Urban Mobility, one of the organisation's so-called KICs. What is a KIC, you ask? As the EIT explains on its website, the acronym stands for "Knowledge and Innovation Communities" and they are essentially Europe-wide networks centred …

We had a very interesting conversation with the co-founder and CEO of clean energy scale-up Proxima Fusion at the recent DLD Conference in Munich, and fortunately for you we recorded it! Have a listen to this interview with Francesco Sciortino, whose deep tech company aims to build an entirely new generation of fusion power plants, using QI stellar…

On the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 event in Paris, we recorded a short but sweet interview with Jennifer Schenker, founder and editor-in-chief of The Innovator, which she describes as a "pan-European publication with global aspirations". Having covered the European technology sector for 30+ years, the veteran journalist started The …

On the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 Europe event in Paris, we had a chance to sit down with Timo Toikkanen, an early investor and advisor to, and these days chief executive officer of Finland-based professional mixed reality company Varjo. Toikannen talks about the origins and early, R&D-focussed years of the deep tech scale-up, less…

We jumped at the opportunity to sit down with Jennifer Webb, an Investment Director at Swisscom Ventures who leads investments in sustainable technologies. She joined from LGT Lightrock in London where she spent five years building the innovative sustainable technology investment vehicle with investments in B2B SaaS, healthcare and education. On th…

Deep tech company Soter Analytics was started in 2016 to reduce workplace ergonomic injuries in warehouses and factories, drive-down claims costs, boost productivity and improve worker retention using smart safety wearables and AI-driven technologies. At the most recent OTB Ventures Summit, we caught up with the company's CEO, Matthew Hart, who exp…

Managed by the European Investment Fund, the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI) has allocated nearly €1 billion to four strategic funds in its first year, including Atomico and Keensight Capital, in an effort to propel forward the EU tech sector with potential leverage of up to €6 billion. The ETCI fund-of-funds was inaugurated in February 2…

France-based deep tech company Cailabs is a global leader when it comes to designing, manufacturing and selling specialised photonics solutions for free-space transmission, industrial lasers, local area networks and telecommunications, among other use cases. An innovator in the world of 'complex light shaping', the high tech scale-up recently close…

We sat down with Jan Goetz, a quantum physicist and co-founding CEO of IQM Quantum Computers, building next-generation quantum computers right here in Europe. Goetz, who also served as an EIC Board Member in the past and recently - and graciously - accepted to become an EIC Scaling Club Council member, was kind enough to take time out of his day at…

In recent times, the issue of space traffic has become a priority for the European Space Agency because of the threat posed by the increasing amount of debris orbiting the Earth. Decommissioned or abandoned satellites, parts of rocket boosters and solar panels, and even simple nuts and bolts are orbiting hundreds of kilometres above our planet and …

We interviewed Rafal Modrzewski, co-founder and CEO of ICEYE, a Finland-based micro-satellite manufacturer, at the recent OTB Ventures Summit in Poland. Founded in 2014 and backed by the EIC along the way, ICEYE essentially provides persistent monitoring capabilities for any location on earth (even at night and when it's cloudy). Owning the world’s…

We caught up with Adam Niewinski, a partner at OTB Ventures, a Poland-based investment firm that backs deep tech startups and scale-ups from across Europe, particularly in the CEE region. The VC firm is investing primarily in four sectors, namely AI and automation, space tech, fintech infrastructure and cybersecurity. Check out our interview to lea…

The EIC Scaling Club team had a great chat with Ana Maiques, co-founder and CEO of Neuroelectrics a Barcelona-based deep tech company that produces devices to stimulate and treat the brain. Founded in 2011, it is a spin-off of Starlab Neuroscience Research which was established in 2000. Ana was nominated by IESE as one of the most influential entre…

The EIC Scaling Club touched base with Svilen Rangelov, co-founder and chief executive officer of Bulgarian deep tech company Dronamics, which is building the world's first cargo drone airline. In 2022, Dronamics was awarded a €2.5 million grant by the European Commission under the EIC Accelerator program, and secured a license to operate in Europe…