Dutch startups raised $3.5B in 2024. Here are the 10 largest funding rounds - Related to dutch, nvidia, largest, rounds, blows

Dutch startups raised $3.5B in 2024. Here are the 10 largest funding rounds

It’s been a great year for the Dutch startup ecosystem.

Venture capitalists have, so far, invested $ into Netherlands-based early-stage companies, . That makes 2024 Dutch tech’s second-best funding year ever, surpassed only by 2021.

Dutch startups have raised almost 50% more ($ cash this year than in 2023 — and. There are still two weeks to go. It’s a striking uptick, especially considering the rather muted funding environment in broader Europe. Which is on course for its worst year since 2020.

The Netherlands stands to be Europe’s fourth best-funded ecosystem for 2024. It ranks two places higher than last year, beating out Sweden and Switzerland. Unsurprisingly, the UK will clinch the top spot, with $17bn raised so far. Germany is second at $, while France is coming in at a close third with $.

So, with that in mind. Here are the 10 largest funding rounds that made 2024 such a lucrative year for the Dutch startup ecosystem. (Disclaimer: For this list, we count all early-stage companies headquartered in the Netherlands, not necessarily founded there).

This was a whopper. The startup, which builds full-stack AI infrastructure for tech firms, secured the equity in December in a deal led by Nvidia, Accel, and other blue-chip investors.

*(While Dealroom counts Nebius as a startup, they’re a public enterprise so we’re not so sure.).

The Dutch online supermarket unicorn bagged the funding in January to fuel its international expansion, as it looks to become a profitable grocery delivery service (which has proven bloody difficult for most).

The Rotterdam-based enterprise makes advanced tools for inspecting computer chips during manufacturing. Adding to the Netherlands’ wealth of semiconductor success stories.

Cha-ching! We have a new unicorn in the house. More accurately, in our house, seeing as Mews is based at TNW City in Amsterdam. The startup, which provides a cloud-based property management system (PMS) for the hospitality industry, raised $110mn in March at a valuation of over $ Then in September. It bagged another $100mn.

Cha-ching, again! DataSnipper, which makes AI-powered accounting tools, raised $100mn in February at a $1bn valuation making it the Netherlands’ second newly minted unicorn for 2024.

The biotech firm is developing treatments for inflammatory diseases. It will use the Series B funding to bring its lead product, CIT-013, into Phase 2a clinical trials.

Founded in 2022, Cradle uses generative AI to design and optimise proteins. Aiming to reduce the time and cost associated with protein engineering. The Amsterdam-based startup wants to put its software “into the hands of a million scientists.”.

The Eindhoven-based startup is developing chips, known as AI processing units (AIPUs), that enable computer vision and. Generative AI in devices like robots and drones. The funding round was led by Samsung’s venture arm. For a chip startup, that’s not a bad investor to have onboard.

Payt Software’s AI-powered platform streamlines the debt collection process through automated invoicing. Not exactly ‘sexy’ tech, but the startup’s product is used by over 13,000 businesses in the Netherlands alone so it must be doing something right.

Founded in 2019. Vico is developing therapies for severe neurological diseases. The corporation is the third health tech startup on this list and for good reason — the Netherlands has established itself as one of the world’s leading hubs for biotech and life sciences.

Overall, the Dutch startup ecosystem has proven its resilience and. Strength in 2024, achieving remarkable growth despite broader challenges in the European funding environment. Standout performances come from the sectors of biotech, AI, and semiconductors. As we look ahead, these funding successes position the country’s startups for even greater global impact going into 2025.

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Google DeepMind’s new weather forecaster blows away the competition

Google DeepMind researchers have built an AI weather forecasting tool that makes faster and more accurate predictions than the best system available today.

Dubbed GenCast, the new model outperformed the ENS forecast. Widely regarded as the world leader, 97% of the time for predictions up to 15 days in advance. It was tested on over 1,320 weather scenarios, including tropical cyclones and heatwaves.

“Outperforming ENS marks something of an inflection point in the advance of AI for weather prediction,” Ilan Price, a research scientist at Google DeepMind. Told the Guardian. “At least in the short term, these models are going to accompany and be alongside existing, traditional approaches.”.

GenCast is a diffusion machine learning model. Similar to those used in generative AI for tasks like image or text creation. However, it’s uniquely adapted for weather prediction, trained on four decades of data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) — the agency behind ENS.

During the experiments. Researchers asked GenCast to generate a forecast for 2019. They then compared the results to the actual weather during that year as well as ENS’ predictions.

GenCast creates an ensemble of 50+ different predictions. Each showing a possible future scenario. This data helps authorities prepare for extreme weather events like hurricanes or wind farm operators enhanced predict power output days in advance.

The fancy name for this technique is probabilistic ensemble forecasting. It’s already the gold standard in traditional forecast systems. However, GenCast is taking things up a notch. The system can spit out predictions in far less time: 8 minutes, compared to hours for traditional models.

That’s because models like ENS run on massive supercomputers that have to crunch through millions of equations to make a prediction. By contrast, GenCast runs on a single Google Cloud TPU, a chip designed for machine learning. That’s because the AI has been trained, it’s “learnt” the data — it doesn’t have to go through it every single time it needs to make a forecast.

GenCast improves upon Deepmind’s GraphCast model unveiled last year. Other tech firms are also developing their own AI weather forecasters. Nvidia released FourCastNet in 2022, while Huawei launched its Pangu-Weather model in 2023.

So will AI replace traditional forecasting soon? Probably not. Models like GenCast still rely on data from traditional weather systems and models to train and calibrate their predictions. However, AI can certainly enhance current methods.

“The greatest value comes from a hybrid approach, combining human assessment, traditional physics-based models and AI-based weather forecasting,” Steven Ramsdale, chief forecaster at the UK’s Met Office, told the Financial Times.

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It’s been a great year for the Dutch startup ecosystem.

Venture capitalists have, so far, invested $ into Netherlands-based early-stage companie...

Netherlands strikes deal with Nvidia for AI supercomputing hub

The Dutch government has reached a deal with Nvidia to supply hardware and expertise for the construction of an AI facility in the Netherlands.

The facility will centre around an AI supercomputer aimed at accelerating research and development, as the country pushes to further digitalise its economy. .

The Dutch Minister for Economic Affairs Dirk Beljaarts is currently in Silicon Valley, where he is meeting with executives at Nvidia. The world’s second most valuable enterprise, Nvidia is a world leader in graphics processing units (GPUs) for artificial intelligence applications.

“Before a shovel can go into the ground, we need to be sure that the required knowledge and. Hardware is available,” stated Minister Beljaarts. “Today the Netherlands has taken an key step together with Nvidia. This brings the construction of a Dutch AI facility a lot closer.”.

The ministry didn’t provide a timeline or specific details for the AI facility. Nvidia declined our request for comment.

The Netherlands, which ranked in the top 10 most digitised countries globally last year. Is pushing to position itself as a leader in AI. In January last year, the government ringfenced over €200mn to boost local investment in the technology.

“Asia and the US have taken the lead [in AI] and Europe will have to catch up,” mentioned the former economic affairs minister Micky Adriaansens at the time.

Key priorities of the government’s strategy include fostering AI talent, building infrastructure. Ensuring safe applications, and enabling cooperation through entities like the Dutch AI Coalition. Last year, the Benelux nation also embarked on building its own “safer” large language model (LLM), called GPT-NL.

To execute its plans. The Netherlands is going to need more computing power to train AI machines. Aside from Nvidia, Beljaarts is also meeting with chipmaker AMD. The Minister is also in California to “strengthen relations” between Dutch and American technology companies more broadly, the government noted.

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