Good morning {{first_name}},
This week in Deep Tech Now, we’re spotlighting Axel Deniz, Bosch Business Innovations’ new CEO since January. Here are 4 reasons to take notice:
Invented for Life, Built Globally: Bosch Business Innovations operates across eight innovation hubs in the Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific, turning Bosch’s engineering excellence into founder-led ventures with global reach.
Ecosystem-First: The corporate venture builder transforms deep tech and Bosch assets into investable businesses – together with external talent, partners, and investors.
Builder DNA: Axel founded and led several startups, and brought back startup ethos from his years in San Francisco, which he later applied as strategy leader for the global business ecosystem programme of the PwC network.
Next Steps: Connect with Bosch Business Innovations on LinkedIn to hear first about the upcoming Bosch Match Camp – connecting external founders with Bosch assets to build the next generation of deep tech ventures.
Also this week: 5 early-stage European quantum startups that could bring quantum advantage closer — fittingly, in the 100th year since quantum mechanics was first described.
In 1925, W. Heisenberg, N. Bohr, and E. Schrödinger developed the foundational principles of the field.
Just last week, another trio — Clarke, Devoret, and M. Martinis — was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit", advancing the field toward practical applications.
To wrap up, we’re raffling off some Da Vinci-inspired merch exclusively for readers.
Let’s dive in.
VENTURE CLIENTING CHRONICLES
Axel Deniz — CEO — Bosch Business Innovations
In which Deep Tech fields are you actively building ventures and seeking collaborations right now?
Axel Deniz: At Bosch Business Innovations, we build new ventures where Bosch’s deep tech expertise meets big global problems.
Our current focus lies in three areas:
Software-defined manufacturing, where we’re redefining how factories operate through intelligent software and automation;
Carbon capture, utilisation and storage, where we’re enabling a circular carbon economy by turning CO₂ into value;
Healthcare, where we redefine diagnostics and monitoring to keep people as fit, healthy and independent as possible.
How do you usually identify and select promising partners?
We start from a clear investment thesis and build a dedicated partner network around it, tailored to the specific market and regional context.
For each focus area, we look for partners – from universities, entrepreneurial talent, corporates, scaleups, to investors – whose expertise complements Bosch’s internal capabilities.
What matters most to us is that we meet our partners at eye level and share risks and rewards in venture building.
Which two startup teams have inspired you the most in the last year – and why?
Bosch Digital Twin Industries — a standout from Bosch’s former intrapreneurship programme. It combines AI and physics in a hybrid model to reduce downtime of industrial assets. This exemplifies best how Bosch’s industrial DNA can be married with AI. I have the honor now to carve this business out as a spin-off and we are currently fundraising here.
LiveEO — an earth observation champion. The CVC of my former employer invested in LiveEO while I was a corporate development executive there. It uses cutting-edge satellite technology to deliver analytics and actionable insights in the infrastructure domain. It’s tripling its growth, successfully raised follow-on rounds and is poised to become a category leader.
Enpal — THE German greentech unicorn. I met the founder Mario during a joint accelerator programme back in 2009. What he has achieved is simply impressive and I admire his work deeply. The company transformed from a heat pump and solar-focused business into a fully integrated provider of renewable energy solutions and has raised more than a billion euros in capital from a very reputable roster of global investors. I don’t see this beautiful success story coming to a halt anytime soon.
What is one book, habit, or life experience that has shaped how you approach open innovation?
For several years, I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. There, I experienced first-hand that it takes an ecosystem to raise a startup.
This stuck with me and fits well with Bosch’s legacy. The founder Robert Bosch once said he’d rather “lose money than trust” — and that mindset is needed in open innovation which will only thrive when it is built on trust, transparency, and long-term partnership.
That defines how I work with founders, investors and partners today: As if you want to raise a child together.
If you could put up a billboard at every major airport in Europe – what would it say?
Welcome to Europe, the largest open-air museum in the world
If you can read this, it’s too late
——————————————
Dear Europe, can you agree on one economic agenda and stick to it for 20 years?
□ Yes □ No □ Maybe
DEEP TECH OPEN | QUANTUM
Top 5 European Early-Stage Quantum Startups to Watch
C12 | Paris, France
Focus: Developing universal quantum computers using carbon nanotubes
Origins: Spin-off of the Physics Laboratory of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris
Latest funding round: €18 M in June 2024
Key corporate backer: BNP Paribas Développement
Highlight: Picked by the French Defense Ministry as one of its quantum startup partners
Qilimanjaro | Barcelona, Spain
Focus: Full-stack quantum computers using fluxonium qubits
Origins: Spin-off from Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Universitat de Barcelona, and the Institute of High-Energy Physics (IFAE)
Latest funding round: $10.7 M in March 2025
Key corporate backer: Repsol Ventures
Highlight: Won the 4YFN Awards at MWC 2024
➔ Qilimanjaro’s Hybrid Quantum Data Center is scheduled to open in Barcelona this autumn
QMill | Espoo, Finland
Focus: Quantum-advantage algorithms
Origins: Based in Espoo, which it sees as a major growing quantum hub
Latest funding round: €4 M in September 2024
Highlight: Appointed former VTT president Antti Vasara as chairman and former Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark as board member
QuantWare | Delft, Netherlands
Focus: Scaling bottlenecks in quantum processing units with its core offering, VIO
Origins: Spin-off from TU Delft and its affiliated research institute, QuTech
Latest funding round: €23.3 M in June 2025
Highlight: Won the Quantum Computing Hardware category of the Quantum Effects Award 2025 for its Contralto-A processor
➔ Find out more about the growing Dutch quantum ecosystem
SiC Systems | Copenhagen, Denmark & Nashville, TN, USA
Focus: Bringing AI agents together with quantum computing and sensors
Origins: Spin-off from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Latest funding round: Led by QDNL Participations, with participation from Propagator Ventures, Plug and Play, and Wavepeak Ventures (undisclosed amount)
Highlight: Co-founded by Christopher Savoie, co-inventor of the AI system that underpinned the development of Apple’s Siri
➔ Read more about the company’s launch this week and its goal to empower industries and militaries with intelligent, adaptive systems that operate at the edge of physics and computation
ECOSYSTEM GIFT
Celebrate 2,000 Years of Innovation — Get Limited-Edition DTM Merch
Soon, we’ll be launching a surprise and giving the whole community a chance to grab Deep Tech Momentum merch. But for our loyal readers (yes, you!) we are raffling two exclusive sets of limited-edition t-shirts + stickers.
The theme? Da Vinci – daring to take risks, being courageous, and thinking like a founder. It captures the very essence of DTM’s mission: sparking Europe’s next Deep Tech Renaissance and reclaiming its 2,000-year legacy of bold, visionary innovation.
To enter, reply to this email with “DA VINCI”, and you could be one of the lucky winners.
Last Week’s Winner: Congratulations to Thomas Parry, winner of a 30-minute communication coaching session with Stew Bewley. We’ll connect you both shortly!
Glad to have you with us at Deep Tech Now.
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