Dear all,

Once a year, DTM screens more than 10,000 European deep tech companies. The defining pattern at DTM26: almost every winner was a translation — a technique proven in one domain, carried into another as a breakthrough. One current ran beneath all of it: AI is becoming the control layer for capital-intensive physical systems, where value sits not in the single machine but in the software coordinating many.

We have seen this before. Pasteur, Curie, Shannon each bridged two worlds. Today's strongest frontiers bridge three. Drone autonomy fuses AI, photonics and aerospace. Loitering munitions fuse software, manufacturing and physics. Solar beamed from orbit fuses materials science, robotics and energy. Capital flows to exactly where they collide.

Here are the eleven frontiers we saw.

Autonomous & contested systems

1 — Drones, counter-drones and autonomy are now one category. The European stack has filled in, and defence procurement is the fastest de-risking path in deep tech. Winners: Six Robotics (NO) (Breakthrough Momentum Award), swarm autonomy for drone fleets; INLEAP Photonics (DE), beam-steering carried from industrial lasers into defence. Watch: Mutable Tactics (UK) (one operator, mixed fleets, comms-denied) · Wolf Radar (DE) (mass-producible European radar).

2 — Precision strike: the strike chain is being rebuilt in software. Ukraine made the lesson unavoidable — you must reach the infrastructure an adversary strikes from. Europe's edge isn't the munition; it's the targeting, navigation and autonomy software feeding the effect chain, with effectors (STARK, Destinus) scaling downstream. Watch: Unmanned Defense Systems (LT) (AI-enabled UAS uniting ISR, targeting and strike) · Vydar (NL) (GPS-denied navigation for drones).

Robotics in the physical economy

3 — Robots are stepping out of the cage. Automation is shifting from fixed arms to general-purpose machines that work among people and read human intent — the interface NEURA Robotics symbolises. Watch: General Robotics (FR) (AI actuators for the 72% of tasks robots can't yet handle) · Embodied AI (CH) (a soft arm driven by natural language).

4 — The blue economy is the next robotics frontier. A $3T base — offshore wind, subsea cables, ports, naval — where the brutal environment keeps the field thin and Europe leads rather than chases. Winner: Bubble Robotics (CH), autonomous surface and underwater robot fleets with edge AI for offshore inspection and monitoring. Watch: Hefring Marine (IS) (AI wave-impact avoidance and fleet intelligence for vessels).

The compute layer

5 — Europe is rebuilding the layers below the GPU. The capital-efficient bets sit one layer down — architecture, chipmaking, cooling, memory. Winners: Flow Computing (FI), a PPU lifting CPU performance up to 100×; conformally (DE), PFAS-free chip and sensor coatings. Watch: Cnuic (UK) (maskless lithography — a wedge into ASML's lock) · apheros (CH) (metal-foam datacenter cooling).

6 — Quantum is splitting into three investable layers. Past "qubits someday" into hardware, near-term algorithms, and sensing already shipping into GPS-denied navigation. Watch: ZuriQ (CH) (trapped-ion hardware, reconfigurable 2D grid) · Peak Quantum (DE) (error-protected superconducting processors) · QOODA (DE) (quantum-sensor navigation, GPS-denied).

AI in the enterprise

7 — Agentic AI is hitting the enterprise P&L. Procurement is the wedge — savings are measurable, budgets exist. What wins now is traction proving P&L impact fast, not capability claims. Winner: Magentic (UK), agents recovering P&L across procurement. Watch: Sybilion (PT) (external signals into sharper procurement) · Qorelo (DE) (agentic AI cutting the SAP transformation slog).

Energy & materials

8 — System-level pathways to lower energy-system costs. Not cheaper generation — cutting the cost of the whole system: firm dispatchable power and grids that absorb renewables. Watch: Cartesian Energy (NO) (thermal batteries cutting energy cost ~20% and peak demand ~30%) · Shifted Energy (FR) (>10-hour compressed-air storage).

9 — The energy transition is now a materials supply-chain problem. Europe is engineering out silver, iridium, rare-earth magnets and lithium; removing geopolitical exposure is the moat. Watch: elementarhy (DE) (iridium-free electrolyzer membranes, −95% rare-metal cost in green hydrogen) · PV2+ (DE) (silver replaced by copper electroplating in solar).

The orbital frontier

10 — Space is becoming an industrial site, not just an observation post. Value is rotating from imagery into the picks-and-shovels of an orbital economy. Winner: DPhi Space (CH), Clustergate rideshare satellites with onboard compute. Watch: Orbital Matter (PL & DE) (in-orbit 3D printing) · Orbital Paradigm (ES) (reusable in-orbit logistics) · Tumbleweed (AT) (microgravity round-trips ~10× cheaper).

11 — Energy is moving into orbit. Power generated and beamed from space is now a fundable category. Winner: Dcubed (DE), origami solar arrays with an in-orbit arm (Araqys) 3D-printing power infrastructure in space. Watch: TerraSpark (DE) (orbital solar beamed to Earth) · SunCubes (IT) (laser power beaming).

Pasteur, Curie and Shannon each made their leap by refusing to stay inside one discipline. In Berlin we saw a whole ecosystem do the same at once — physics translated into defence, AI into the factory and the ocean, photons into compute, sunlight in orbit into power on the ground.

With hopes that the next frontier breakthrough is European — and that it crashed a few disciplines to get there,

Martin

DEEP TECH OPEN | MARITIME DEFENCE TECH

Industrial AI is quietly becoming one of Europe's most promising AI categories, as startups move beyond copilots and into the core operations of factories, machines and industrial supply chains. We selected five companies that stand out for their relevance to the European Mittelstand, technological differentiation and potential to become foundational infrastructure for the next generation of manufacturing. 

Bliro | Munich, Germany

→ Expansion into industrial service and field operations where knowledge capture remains highly fragmented.

Brainr | Leiria, Portugal

Synthavo | Hamburg, Germany

→ Potential emergence as a category leader in AI-native industrial service infrastructure.

Zerynth | Pisa, Italy

Daedalus | Karlsruhe, Germany

→ Its ability to scale from advanced manufacturing services into a broader industrial production platform.

The Dealroom Global Tech Ecosystem Index 2026 maps the world's innovation landscape through 325 startup ecosystems across 77 countries, revealing not only where the largest tech hubs are located, but also which regions are producing the highest innovation output and the fastest growth. 

The ranking suggests that Europe is no longer a startup ecosystem under construction. It is becoming a network of highly specialized innovation clusters. 

It just came out last week and here’s 5 key take-aways:

The largest ecosystems remain overwhelmingly American. Four of the world's top five Global Champions are located in the United States, while London (#4) and Paris (#8) are Europe's only representatives in the global top ten.

Yet the picture changes when performance is measured per capita. Cambridge, London, Stockholm, Ghent, Lausanne, Oxford, Copenhagen and Munich all rank among the world's leading Density Leaders. Europe's strength lies in concentrated talent, world-class universities and highly connected innovation clusters.

Why it matters: Europe is unlikely to outspend the US. It does not need to. Its edge comes from productivity of capital and talent.

Munich ranks #11 globally among all startup ecosystems and enters the world's top 20 Density Leaders. Unlike many software-driven hubs, Munich's growth is built on a combination of AI, industrial technology, advanced manufacturing, robotics and engineering talent. The report highlights the city's ability to connect universities, investors and Mittelstand companies into a functioning innovation flywheel.

Why it matters: If Europe wants sovereign AI and industrial resilience, Munich increasingly looks like the continent's most strategic ecosystem.

One of the report's most striking findings is the rise of secondary innovation centers. Ghent ranks among the world's top ten Density Leaders. Cambridge and Oxford continue punching far above their weight. Zagreb enters the global top ten Rising Stars in Europe, while Kyiv ranks among the fastest-growing ecosystems despite operating during wartime.

Why it matters: Innovation is becoming more geographically distributed. The next European unicorn is increasingly likely to emerge from a specialist cluster rather than a mega-city.

The report repeatedly highlights the role of AI in strengthening leading ecosystems. Paris benefits from a new generation of AI founders and international capital inflows. London continues to attract global AI talent. Munich is leveraging major AI investments through Bavaria's Hightech Agenda. The result is a growing divergence between ecosystems capable of attracting frontier AI talent and those that cannot.

Why it matters: In the AI era, talent concentration becomes even more important than capital concentration.

The report shows Europe producing globally competitive startup ecosystems, strong founder density and increasingly sophisticated deep-tech clusters. What remains missing is the scale achieved by Bay Area, New York and Boston, whose enterprise values still dwarf European peers. London's ecosystem is worth roughly $714 billion. By comparison, the Bay Area exceeds $20 trillion in combined enterprise value.

Why it matters: Europe has largely solved the startup formation problem. The next decade will be defined by whether it can build and retain global category leaders.

We are hiring four senior operators to join us on the next chapter of scaling DTM:

👤 Chief of Staff
👤 Director of the Guardian Program & Executive Membership
👤 Director of Strategy & Programming
👤 Director of Partnerships

Send your application & LinkedIn to [email protected]

From June 6–14, JUNI Future Week is bringing together founders, investors, researchers and policymakers for what may become the most concentrated innovation gathering in Europe this year. If you're raising capital, expanding your network or looking to plug into Europe's innovation ecosystem, Berlin should be on your calendar this June.

→ Register and get your personal JUNI Compass

Somewhere off a contested coastline, a signal drops. GPS goes dark, comms degrade, and a vessel has to decide — alone — what happens next. These are the moments the open sea doesn't forgive, and they're exactly the moments a small group of builders will spend one weekend in Rome trying to solve. Free to attend, meals on us, held in English.

→ See full details and apply here.