Sandwiched between Germany, France, and Belgium, the tiny country of Luxembourg is one among Europe’s smallest, but in addition its wealthiest — its residents benefit from the second-highest per capita revenue on the earth.
Key to this success is its thriving financial providers sector which has helped draw several massive names to the Grand Duchy, together with the European Investment Financial institution and Amazon. It’s no shock then that fintech has been identified as the tech sector with the greatest progress potential within the area.
Luxembourg was also one of many world’s largest buyers in AI per capita in 2021, surpassed solely by Israel, the US, and Sweden (in that order). The National Research Fund has allocated €200mn to AI research tasks over the past five years. To help power these developments is Meluxina, one among Europe’s most powerful supercomputers.
Whereas only residence to 600,000 individuals, Luxembourg’s thriving financial system, trendy infrastructure, international workforce, and generous authorities grants, which cowl as much as 80% of R&D prices, permit it to punch above its weight as a hub for rising tech startups.
Nicely-recognized success stories embrace social media analytics and monitoring device Talkwalker, and online jobs board JobToday. OCSiAI, a producer of graphene nanotubes, made headlines in 2019 when it joined Europe’s growing listing of tech unicorns.
“Though Luxembourg is a small country, it shares its borders with two of Europe’s largest economies,” identified Kenneth Graham, CEO of Tomorrowstreet, a Luxembourg-based mostly innovation centre that focuses on scaling late-stage deep tech startups.
“Half the inhabitants advance from elsewhere and lots of have connections with individuals everywhere in the world, together with Silicon Valley and the UK. This variety of thought actually makes the nation a special place to do enterprise,” he stated.
Virtually 50% of Luxembourg’s workforce commute from neighbouring nations, and 80% of the population speaks English.
A 2022 report from Startup Genome found that startup funding deals in Luxembourg elevated five-fold between 2012 and 2021. Notably, the supply of seed funding in the country is considerably larger when in comparison with peers with comparable-sized economies. Though it performs worse on the subject of later-stage investments.
This progress is undoubtedly partly because of the emergence of a number of startup initiatives in recent times, resembling the government-backed Fit4Star program. Another is House of Startups, a place where incubators, accelerators, buyers, and startups are all housed underneath one roof in the downtown Gare district of Luxembourg City. Funded by the Chamber of Commerce, the centre homes a whopping 200 of the nation’s 521 tech startups.
All of this puts Luxembourg’s tech ecosystem on monitor to continue its upward progress trajectory in coming years, not just in fintech but in addition SaaS, climatetech, spacetech, and manufacturing.
Five startups to observe
1. Circu Li-ion
Founded just two years in the past, this climatetech startup has developed an automatic upcycling answer that permits the sustainable recycling of lithium-ion cells for reuse at scale. Final month, the company raised €eight.5mn in seed funding.
Circu Li-ion’s providers near at an opportune second for the company (and the planet), following the EU’s new battery regulation, which goals to ensure a round financial system and will require obligatory minimal levels of recycled parts for EV batteries.
2. Salonkee
Based in 2016, Salonkee has developed a web-based reservation platform to streamline the booking of hair or magnificence appointments. The startup has raised €35mn up to now and is already worthwhile. It presently has one hundred ten staff across workplaces in Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands.
3. Subsequent Gate Tech
Subsequent Gate Tech is a knowledge-driven fintech that provides SaaS solutions for the asset management business. Principally, it helps banks and the like automate the boring and repetitive elements of knowledge administration (I assumed it was all boring!). Since launching in 2020, the startup has raised €17mn, and is valued at close to €50mn, in accordance with knowledge from Dealroom.
four. OQ Tech
This spacetech startup has developed a constellation of satellites that permit IoT units on Earth to remain related even when there isn’t any cellphone reception. It will possibly also help bi-directional communication to machines comparable to banking ATMs in poor connectivity areas. 5 of the corporate’s satellites are already in orbit. Oil and fuel big Saudi Aramco is OQ Tech’s largest customer and invested €13mn into the startup last yr.
5. nZero
Final but not least is nZero, a carbon administration platform that provides NGOs, authorities businesses, and organisations accurate knowledge on their carbon emissions. It presents insights throughout all three emissions scopes, including embodied carbon which is usually neglected from many carbon calculating instruments. Up to now the company has raised €15mn and racked in virtually €8mn in revenues last yr.