Good afternoon {{first_name}},
This week we take a look at the Top 5 of Europe’s emerging cohort of Autonomous Discovery Labs. We are talking about startups building the closed-loop R&D stack where AI designs experiments, robotics executes them, analytics measures the results, and models learn what to test next.
Basically, it’s the shift from AI as a prediction engine to AI as an experimental engine, across materials, chemistry, drug discovery and biomanufacturing.
Also, we turn to the EIC Impact Report 2026, one of the clearest snapshots yet of Europe’s deep tech scale-up machinery. Since 2021, the EIC has deployed more than €6.5 billion in grant and equity support. Its fund now backs nearly 350 companies, has mobilised more than €5 billion in co-investment, and was involved in twelve €100 million-plus rounds in 2025.
Also in this issue:
Maple Aviation raises €4 million to bring autonomous medical drone logistics into real operations
Last call for Stuttgart’s KI-Gipfel, where AI meets Mittelstand execution.
Enjoy the read!
NEWS FROM THE COMMUNITY
Maple Aviation Takes Medical Logistics Above the Traffic
Maple Aviation has raised €4 million in Seed funding to bring autonomous medical drone logistics from development into real operations. Founded in 2022 and based in Ottobrunn, Bavaria, the company is building emission-free cargo drone infrastructure for healthcare — delivering medication, laboratory samples and other time-critical medical goods faster, with less dependency on road traffic.
What makes Maple interesting is the ambition behind the first route: this is not a drone demo, but the early architecture of a healthcare logistics network. The company is developing autonomous eVTOL cargo drones for mid-mile transport, with ESA describing its platform as designed for payloads from 10 kg to 200 kg over distances of up to 120 km, using compact landing pads as small as 3 × 3 metres.
With backing from Bayern Kapital, ES Kapital, Superangels, strategic angels, the Bavarian aviation research programme and the European Space Agency, Maple now has the capital to expand its drone technology, charging infrastructure and team — and to prove that medical logistics can move above the traffic, not through it.
DEEP TECH OPEN | AUTONOMOUS AND SELF-DRIVING LABORATORIES
Europe’s Top-5 Autonomous Discovery Labs | Early Stage ($4,6m-10m)
Not just “robots in the lab.”, but closed-loop R&D stack: These European startups are building closed-loop experimental platforms where AI, robotics and scientific workflows converge to accelerate materials, chemistry, drug discovery and biomanufacturing.
Dunia Innovations | Berlin, Germany
Technology: Closed-loop AI and robotics platform for autonomous materials discovery, combining science-based AI algorithms, robotic experimentation, chemical workflows and quantum chemistry-derived material representations.
Customers: Energy companies, chemical companies, advanced materials manufacturers, semiconductor players, battery ecosystem partners and industrial R&D teams working on high-performance materials.
Use Cases: New catalysts, battery materials, green hydrogen, ammonia, CO₂ conversion, semiconductor materials and industrial materials where discovery cycles are constrained by slow experimental validation.
Funding: Dunia Innovations raised $11.5 million in September 2025 in a round co-led by Elaia and Redalpine, with participation from the EIC, Pace Ventures, Kindred Capital, Deep Science Ventures, Anglo American and industry angels.
Why it Matters: Dunia targets a core bottleneck in the energy transition: discovering the advanced materials needed for batteries, hydrogen, CO₂ conversion and semiconductors. Its work matters because Europe’s industrial sovereignty depends on owning materials innovation, not importing it.
→ Dunia announced plans for a 6,000-square-metre, €280m facility in Berlin called GigaLab, designed to discover and develop advanced materials at industrial scale, in March 2026
Atinary Technologies | Lausanne, Switzerland
Technology: SDLabs, a no-code AI platform for self-driving labs that combines machine learning, cloud infrastructure, robotics integration, automated experimentation and AI-guided Design of Experiments.
Customers: Pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies, materials companies, energy players, food and cosmetics R&D teams, and industrial laboratories seeking to automate and optimise experimental workflows.
Use Cases: Reaction optimisation, materials discovery, drug discovery workflows, advanced chemistry, high-throughput and low-throughput experimentation, automated data generation and machine-learning-ready experimental datasets.
Funding: Atinary Technologies raised a $5 million seed round in September 2023, led by AgFunder and supported by Cherubic Ventures.
Why it Matters: Atinary is building the orchestration layer for autonomous R&D. While many companies focus on one vertical, Atinary’s platform is designed to sit across laboratories, equipment and scientific domains, turning fragmented experimentation into a more programmable, data-generating system.
→ Atinary is currently partnering with the Frei Lab at the University of York to accelerate discovery of modern antibiotics
Differential Bio | Munich, Germany
Technology: Virtual scale-up platform combining advanced microbiology, lab automation and artificial intelligence to optimise and scale bioprocesses.
Customers: Biomanufacturing companies, precision fermentation startups, foodtech companies, biotech companies, industrial biotechnology players and corporates developing microbial production processes.
Use Cases: Bioprocess optimisation, fermentation scale-up, microbial growth modelling, biomass production, precision fermentation, strain and process development, and faster transition from lab-scale biology to industrial production.
Funding: Differential Bio emerged from stealth in March 2025 with €2 million in pre-seed funding.
Why it Matters: Biomanufacturing is full of promising organisms, pathways and products that fail when they move from controlled lab environments to industrial conditions. Differential Bio addresses that scale-up bottleneck directly, making biology less artisanal and more computationally steered.
→ Differential Bio expands the self-driving lab narrative beyond chemistry and materials into the bioeconomy.
Molecule.one | Warsaw, Poland & San Francisco, US
Technology: AI-driven chemical synthesis platform combining retrosynthesis planning, reaction condition recommendation, synthesis intelligence and experimental chemistry workflows through its Maria platform.
Customers: Pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, chemical manufacturers, contract research organisations and R&D teams working on small-molecule discovery and synthesis planning.
Use Cases: Small-molecule synthesis planning, drug discovery, reaction condition prediction, route optimisation, medicinal chemistry support, chemical manufacturing workflows and faster access to synthesizable molecules.
Funding: Molecule.one raised $4.6 million in seed funding in 2021 led by Atmos Ventures.
Why it Matters: Drug discovery often gets blocked not by the design of theoretical molecules, but by the ability to make them. Molecule.one tackles the “make” bottleneck by helping chemists identify feasible synthesis routes and conditions faster, bringing AI closer to the practical constraints of experimental chemistry.
→ Molecule.One claims to be running one of the largest sustained microliter-scale data generation efforts on the planet: The lab has been running 12,000 reactions per week for a month, and has executed over 200,000 microliter-scale reactions in a year.
Iktos | Paris, France
Technology: AI and robotics platform for small-molecule drug discovery, integrating generative AI, retrosynthesis, orchestration software, synthesis robotics, purification, analysis and biological testing into an automated Design-Make-Test-Analyse cycle.
Customers: Pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, drug discovery teams, medicinal chemistry organisations and partners seeking faster small-molecule discovery workflows.
Use Cases: Small-molecule drug discovery, hit discovery, hit-to-lead, lead optimisation, automated synthesis, biological testing, retrosynthesis planning and closed-loop medicinal chemistry workflows.
Funding: Iktos raised a €15.5 million Series A in March 2023, co-led by M Ventures and Debiopharm Innovation Fund, with participation from Omnes Capital. In February 2025, the company secured a €2.5 million EIC Accelerator grant to advance its automated AI and robotics platform for drug discovery.
Why it Matters: Iktos brings the autonomous lab logic into one of the highest-value R&D markets: drug discovery. By integrating molecule generation, synthesis planning and robotic execution, it addresses the core inefficiency of pharma R&D — slow, expensive and uncertain Design-Make-Test-Analyse cycles.
→ Iktos shows where autonomous labs are heading: from AI models that suggest molecules to integrated discovery engines that design, make, test and learn.
THE PULSE
Europe’s Deep Tech Flywheel Is Starting to Compound
Investments into EIC companies following entry into the programme broken down by sector. Source: EIC Impact Report 2026
The EIC Impact Report 2026 reads less like an annual report and more like a stress test of Europe’s ability to turn frontier science into globally competitive companies.
The report assesses the European Innovation Council’s impact since its launch under Horizon Europe in 2021. With a €10 billion programme budget, the EIC has deployed more than €6.5 billion in grant and equity support across 800 deep tech startups and SMEs, 475 advanced research projects and 215 projects translating research into market opportunities. Its investment arm, the EIC Fund, now has a portfolio of nearly 350 companies and has mobilised more than €5 billion in co-investment.
Here’s 5 key takeaways from the report:
The EIC is becoming one of Europe’s core deep tech investors.
The EIC Fund has invested more than €1.7 billion into nearly 350 companies across 26 countries. In 2025 alone, it invested more than €500 million across over 130 transactions, including both new investments and follow-on rounds. That matters because Europe’s deep tech gap is not only about invention — it is about capital continuity from lab to industrial scale.Public capital is crowding in private capital at meaningful scale.
The EIC Fund has co-invested with more than 1,000 VCs and CVCs, mobilising over €5 billion in co-investment. The report states a leverage effect of €3.5 of additional investment for every €1 from the EU budget. This is the most important signal in the report: the EIC is not acting as a substitute for private capital, but increasingly as an anchor that reduces perceived risk in strategic technologies.Europe is beginning to produce deep tech scale-up outcomes, not just early-stage pipelines.
In 2025, EIC-backed companies achieved three unicorn valuations, twelve successful exits and twelve equity rounds above €100 million. The report also notes that EIC-backed companies have collectively raised more than €15.5 billion after entering the programme, with almost €4 billion raised in 2025 alone.Strategic technology sectors are no longer marginal in the portfolio.
The EIC has become especially relevant in quantum, semiconductors, space, AI, energy and biotech. In 2025, EIC Fund investments were involved in nearly 45% of all VC investments into quantum and semiconductor technologies in the EU. EIC-backed companies also captured nearly 25% of European space-tech investment and include four of the top ten European space companies by investment raised.Europe’s deep tech retention story is stronger than expected.
The report states that only 1% of EIC Fund portfolio companies subsequently relocated outside Europe. Combined with the fact that more than 80% of EIC Fund deals involve cross-border capital flows, this suggests that Europe’s challenge is not only preventing startups from leaving — it is building a more integrated European scale-up market around them.
DTM OPPORTUNITIES
Stuttgart Is Ready For KI-Gipfel 2026
AI is done waiting for permission. Now it needs operators.
On 30 June 2026, A11 kicks off the KI-Gipfel 2026 to the MHP Arena in Stuttgart — bringing together founders, Mittelstand leaders, AI builders and corporate decision-makers who want less AI theatre and more execution. Co-hosted by INXM, with speakers from Project A, SAP, Bosch Mobility, Heraeus, Thyssenkrupp Automotive Body Solutions, Staffbase, Banxware and A11 itsef, of course, this is where AI gets pulled out of the keynote and into workflows, factories, teams and boardrooms.
A11 for sure hits a sweet spot with its events: industrial AI, real adoption, Mittelstand speed, operator energy. No abstract “future of work” fog machine. Just the people building, buying and deploying AI where it actually changes margins, processes and competitiveness.
Date: 30 June 2026
Location: MHP Arena, Stuttgart
Best for: Founders, operators, AI builders, corporate innovation teams and Mittelstand decision-makers who are ready to move.
ECOSYSTEM GIFT
Close The Deals That Should Not Slip
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— Isabelle and Martin
Co-Founders, DTM
