The EIC Scaling Club Podcast on European Deep Tech

In this interview, Alberto Bucci, CEO of Jolt Solutions, shares how the company is revolutionizing green hydrogen production with advanced electrochemical coatings for electrolyzers. Based in Spain, Jolt Solutions has developed a scalable, cost-effective, and highly durable coating technology that improves stability, efficiency, and mass production for electrolyzers—key to unlocking the future of clean hydrogen. With a €6.5M Series A investment, the company has built a pilot production line capable of producing 20,000 square meters of electrodes, making it one of the few companies in the world with such capabilities. Now scaling towards TRL 9, Jolt is seeking strategic partnerships and...

In this interview, Matthijs Soede, CEO and Co-Founder of Battolyser Systems, explains how their unique hybrid electrolyzer-battery technology is revolutionizing the clean hydrogen and energy storage industry. Combining iron-nickel battery chemistry with hydrogen production, Battolyser enables renewable energy storage and on-demand hydrogen generation, making it a game-changer for the energy transition. With a megawatt-scale demonstration unit launching in Rotterdam, and a new product generation in development, the company is scaling fast to help Europe achieve energy independence and decarbonization. Backed by venture debt from the European Investment Bank, Battolyser is on a mission to create an integrated clean energy...

In this interview, Julie Sufana, CMO of ContextFlow, shares how the company is revolutionizing radiology AI to improve the early detection of lung cancer, interstitial lung diseases, and COPD. A spinoff from the Medical University of Vienna, ContextFlow uses comprehensive AI to assist radiologists by reducing workload, improving reporting accuracy, and detecting lung cancer up to one year earlier. With €17M in funding, regulatory approval under Europe’s new MDR framework, and a potential reimbursement code in Germany, ContextFlow is leading the way in scaling AI for medical imaging.

In this interview, Julian Melchiorri, CEO and founder of Arborea, shares how his company is transforming food production with biosolar leaf technology. This breakthrough converts sunlight and CO₂ into high-quality protein without using land or water-intensive resources. 150 times more protein-efficient than soy, Arborea’s net-zero, nature-positive ingredients are already being integrated by the world’s largest food corporations, offering a sustainable, scalable, and affordable alternative to traditional protein sources. With $20M in funding and a new Series B round launching, Arborea is poised to revolutionize the future of food.

In this Tech.eu interview, Matthew Schmidt, Head of Partnerships at Sakowin, discusses how the company is pioneering methane plasmalysis to produce clean hydrogen and solid carbon, offering an energy-efficient alternative to electrolysis. With five times the energy efficiency and zero CO2 emissions, Sakowin is helping industries decarbonize at scale. Having raised €11M+ in funding and now opening a €25M round, the company is expanding across Europe and the US, securing pilot projects and regulatory support. As a participant in the EIC Scaling Club, Sakowin is focused on connecting with investors, navigating regulatory frameworks, and attracting top talent to acce...

In this interview, Benjamin Lager, CEO of Protealis, shares how his company is revolutionizing sustainable protein production in Europe. With a mission to localize soybean cultivation, Protealis tackles major global challenges—sustainability, farmer resilience, plant-based food security, and Europe’s protein import dependency. By developing climate-adapted soybean varieties and microbial inoculants for nitrogen fixation, the company is making soybean cultivation viable in European climates while reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers. With six soybean varieties already on the market, Protealis is now transitioning from an R&D-driven company to a commercial scale-up, aiming to disrupt the protein supply chain with high...

In this interview, Maxime Lemiere, Head of Corporate Development at Cailabs, explores how optical ground stations are solving critical challenges in satellite communications, including spectrum congestion, security threats, and low data rates as satellite numbers surge. He explains how Cailabs’ advanced laser technology enables high-speed, highly secure data transmission by mitigating atmospheric turbulence, ensuring reliable satellite-to-ground communication. Maxime shares insights into Cailabs’ recent breakthroughs, such as a world-first stable optical link demonstration in collaboration with the French Defense Innovation Agency, and discusses the company’s strategic vision for growth.

In this interview, Fabio Rosa, Co-Founder and Head of Research at Asgard Therapeutics, discusses their groundbreaking cancer therapy, AT108, which reprograms cancer cells into immune cells. Asgard has raised €30 million in Series A funding and is preparing for clinical trials by 2027. With strong scientific validation and key publications, the company is now focused on partnerships, production scaling, and investor relations to drive its innovative therapy forward.

Introducing one of the EIC Scaling Club Cardiovascular Therapies group members – Anaconda Biomed, a Barcelona-based scale-up revolutionizing stroke treatment with its cutting-edge technology. Their mission statement is ambitious yet simple: to provide the best thrombectomy system to health care professionals. And since its foundation, Anaconda Biomed has been on track to accomplish just that. Listen to the interview with the company's Co-Founder and Managing Director, Dr Ofir Arad, and Chief Medical Officer, Hendrik Lambert.

In this episode, we sit down with Keith Sequeira, Head of the European Innovation Council Unit at the European Commission, during the Scale 100 Forum in Athens, Greece. Keith shares insights into the challenges and opportunities for European scale-ups, highlighting the role of the EIC Scaling Club in closing the scale-up gap. He discusses Europe's strengths as a scaling environment, the rise of promising sectors like quantum technology, and the exciting introduction of the first-ever EU Commissioner for Startups. Tune in to explore how Europe is evolving in the right direction to create global leaders and address major societal challenges.<...

A podcast interview with David Cohen, the co-founder and CEO of Techstars, the startup accelerator, which has backed thousands of startups. In the episode, Cohen addresses recent criticism about its corporate culture and discusses startup trends in Europe and beyond in 2024. 

At the recent EIC Summit, we caught up with Jean-David Malo, Director of EISMEA, the European Commission’s executive agency for the European Innovation Council and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).It was a timely encounter, coinciding with the release of the EIC Impact Report 2023, which highlighted that the total value of the overall portfolio of EIC-supported companies has now reached almost €70 billion (download the PDF here) and our own unveiling of the first 48 deep tech scale-ups to be supported by the EIC Scaling Club from earlier this week. We asked him about the purpose of t...

The EIC Scaling Club team sat down with Fabrizio Del Maffeo on the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 Europe event in Paris. As the co-founder and CEO of Axelera AI, Del Maffeo kicked off the interview pitching his company as a 'small, fast-growing Nvidia'.That's intriguing enough on its own, but the entrepreneur of course told us a bit more about the backstory of Axelera AI, and what the team is busy building over in its HQ in Eindhoven and its many other offices located all across Europe.In essence, Axelera...

Dr. Christian Nagel is a co-founder and partner of Earlybird, a technology investment powerhouse with more than €2 billion under management. Founded in 1997, Earlybird invests in all development and growth phases of tech companies, and has nestled itself among the largest and most experienced venture investors operating in Europe today.We caught up with Christian at the recent Tech Tour Growth50 Europe event in Paris, to gain some more insights into the firm's investment strategy and hypotheses. Aside from that 'VC elevator pitch', we delved into a number of topics, including what's hot in de...

Amadeus Capital Partners has been investing in technology-enabled products and services for nearly three decades. Founded by Anne Glover and Hermann Hauser in 1997, Amadeus has backed more than 190 companies and raised over $1 billion for investment to date.When we had a chance to sit down with Anne on the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 Europe event, we seized the opportunity to ask her some questions about the state of the European deep tech entrepreneurship and investment ecosystem(s).After sharing some facts and figures about Amadeus Capital, we talked about how to navigate...

At the recent EIT Summit in Brussels, we sat down with the organisation's Director, Martin Kern, to discuss what's cooking over at the European Institute of Innovation & Technology.Kern, who's been part of the EIT leadership for almost a decade after a long career stint at the European Commission, told us more about the EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities (the so-called KICs), which are essentially Europe-wide networks centered around addressing a specific societal challenge, from sustainable energy to climate change, healthy food and green transport. Keen observers will have noted that this is not dissimilar...

On the sidelines of the recent Tech Tour Growth 50 Europe event, we caught up with Jean Schmitt, Managing Partner at Jolt Capital, a growth capital investor in European B2B deep tech companies.Having been part of the predecessor programme of the EIC Scaling Club, Jean shared his views on the evolving deep tech scale-up creation and financing landscape in this part of the world, which barriers he considers are holding back the European tech ecosystem(s), and how they could potentially be overcome.Enjoy the listen!

Azeem Azhar has had a rich career as a journalist, entrepreneur, author, speaker, analyst, consultant, but now bills himself as an 'independent academic'. These days, he's perhaps best known for Exponential View, which offers weekly deep dives on AI and breakthrough technologies to a vast audience of investors, C-suite execs and global leaders who like to be challenged on thinking about the future. More than a newsletter, Exponential View has become a platform and community for those who are keen to learn about the exponential technologies that are shaping tomorrow.We caught up...

We recently attend the EIT Summit in Brussels, where we had a chance to catch up with Maria Tsavachidis, CEO of EIT Urban Mobility, one of the organisation's so-called KICs.What is a KIC, you ask? As the EIT explains on its website, the acronym stands for "Knowledge and Innovation Communities" and they are essentially Europe-wide networks centred around addressing a specific societal challenge; from sustainable energy to climate change to healthy food and green transport.EIT Urban Mobility is among the earliest such communities, started in January 2019 to "encourage positive changes in...

We had a very interesting conversation with the co-founder and CEO of clean energy scale-up Proxima Fusion at the recent DLD Conference in Munich, and fortunately for you we recorded it!Have a listen to this interview with Francesco Sciortino, whose deep tech company aims to build an entirely new generation of fusion power plants, using QI stellarators.Proxima Fusion is the first-ever spin-out company from the Max Planck Society Institute for Plasma Physics, which happens to have built and operates the most advanced stellarator on the planet, W7-X. Research o...