Europe Plans to Trigger €1 Billion in One Afternoon
Europe's newest growth capital format unveiled, seven Guardians on the capital and venture-clienting side, and twelve founders you want to meet.
For close to a decade, every serious analysis of European deep tech has reached the same conclusion. The science is here. The founders are here. The IP is here. What is missing is the late-stage capital that turns a European Series B into a European Series F instead of an acquisition target for an American buyer.
Mario Draghi made the case in his report on European competitiveness last year. McKinsey put a $1 trillion number on the prize. Lakestar, Walden Catalyst and Dealroom traced the gap line by line in the 2026 European Deeptech Report.
Everybody agrees on the diagnosis: What has been missing is a format.
On 21 May, this hypothesis will be tested in a single 75-minute slot in Berlin.
Deep Tech Momentum will bring together Europe's most serious growth investors and fifteen of its boldest scale-up founders into the same closed room with a €1 billion target on the wall.
This “Growth Capital Salon” will be co-opened by Germany's Chief Investment Officer.
Eight days to go. We can't wait to see the results!
In this edition:
Agenda Highlight: The new Growth Capital Salon — €1 billion in 75 minutes, co-opened by Martin Blessing.
DTM100 Spotlight: Twelve founders heading to Berlin to change Europe's competitiveness trajectory.
Guardians Spotlight: Seven people behind Guardian Connect — and what the format actually does.
Enjoy the read.
Deep Tech Momentum was founded around a single bet: that Europe can catalyse €100 billion in additional venture capital for deep tech by 2030, and broker 10,000 corporate–startup partnerships in the process. Every format at DTM26 chips away at one of those two numbers. The Venture Clienting & CVC Summit works the corporate partnership side. The AI Productivity Summit targets enterprise adoption. The Growth Capital Salon — new for DTM26 — works the capital side directly.
The brief is simple: get fifteen senior partners from the growth funds most active in European deep tech and fifteen founders of Europe's most-tracked scale-ups into the same room for 75 minutes. Five rounds of ten-minute 1:1 meetings. Trigger €1 billion in new investment commitments before everyone leaves the building. That is one percent of the 2030 mission in a single afternoon.
Co-opened by Martin Blessing, Chief Investment Officer of Germany and Chairman of Danske Bank. The most senior signal yet that the federal government treats deep tech growth capital as a strategic priority rather than a private-market afterthought.
Confirmed investors include senior partners from DCVC (Stephen Rodriguez), Hedosophia (Chris O'Connor), Vitruvian Partners (Robert Lang), Eurazeo (Richard Meyer), General Catalyst (Robin Dechant), EIF (Bjorn Tremmerie), Headline (Christian Miele), In-Q-Tel (Steve Bowsher and Yan Zheng), Earlybird (Hendrik Brandis), DST Global (Mikel Pinedo Engelmann), and Drumbeat Capital (Steven Jacobs, Lukas Leitner).
Founders engaged include the CXOs of The Exploration Company, TEKEVER, NEURA Robotics, Marvel Fusion and ICEYE — five scale-ups that between them anchor Europe's positions in launch, defence-grade autonomy, humanoid robotics, fusion energy and SAR imaging.
Three reasons that the broader DTM26 trip matters for any investor:
Build conviction faster. Direct conversations with the founders behind Europe's most-tracked deep tech and AI scale-ups, in a format built for diligence rather than pitch-deck theatre.
Expand your enterprise customer network. 300+ senior corporate buyers across DTM26 with budget authority in Energy, Space, Defence, Robotics, HPC and Advanced Materials. The demand side of any portfolio company's growth path.
Stress-test your DefTech bets. 50+ European armed forces representatives, MoD officials and DefTech innovators on site through the Signals From the Frontline initiative.
📍 21 May 2026 · 12:45–14:00 · Courage Room, Berlin · Invite-only
Enterprise AI
Sybilion — Portugal, 2021 · €4.32M · rated 9.5
AI-powered supply chain intelligence platform that turns commodity prices, energy costs and logistics signals into clearer procurement and forecasting decisions. Backed by EWOR, VentureFriends, Semapa Next and GoHub.
Qorelo — Germany, early stage
Agentic AI that sits on top of SAP landscapes and cuts the time and cost of running enterprise SAP workflows. Aimed at the single largest enterprise software footprint in Europe.
Advanced Materials
novoMOF — Switzerland, 2016 · €4.59M · rated 8.4
Industrial-scale manufacturer of metal-organic frameworks — the same MOFs that drove this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry — with applications in carbon capture, gas separation and water treatment.
elementarhy — UK, early stage · rated 8.5
Iridium-free, PFAS-free membrane electrode assemblies for PEM electrolyzers. One of the few credible answers to the iridium bottleneck holding back green hydrogen at scale.
Manufacturing & Robotics
Staer — early stage · €3.5M · rated 9.0
Spatial intelligence software for autonomous mobile robot fleets. The missing layer that lets industrial AMR deployments scale from one warehouse to fifty.
Bubble Robotics — Switzerland, 2025 · €3.5M
Resident autonomous surface and underwater robot fleets for continuous offshore infrastructure inspection. Targets the blue economy, where every inspection today still means a crewed vessel.
High-Performance Computing
Cnuic Technologies — UK, 2026 · €2.76M · rated 9.0
Working virtual-mask photolithography using photonic chip wave optics to pattern chips without physical masks. One of the only European challengers to ASML at prototype stage.
EDWATEC — Switzerland · €2.7M
Optical amplifiers and lasers built directly on photonic chips, so data-centre and telecom networks transmit more data using less power. Central to the AI gigafactory build-out.
Energy
BL!XT — Sweden, 2018 · €6.7M · rated 8.4
Solid-state circuit breakers and software-defined power systems that let operators monitor and optimise electricity flows in real time across grids, buildings, EV charging and battery storage. The best-funded confirmed energy startup in the cohort.
Qkera — Germany, seed
Ceramic-oxide solid electrolytes and a processing method aimed at unlocking next-generation solid-state batteries. The bet much of European mobility is built on.
Defence
Vydar — Netherlands, 2024 · €300k–€1M · rated 9.0
Low-cost, compact, fully European-made GPS-denied navigation modules using onboard vision and sensor fusion. The lesson from Ukraine in a single module: drones flying without GPS need their own way to know where they are.
Sapient Perception — Denmark · €2M
Wide-area AI sensor platforms for UAVs that cover 100× more ground per sensor than current systems. Relevant to almost every European armed forces drone modernisation programme.
These are the founders heading to Berlin. They will pitch live on 20 May at the DTM100 Pitch Competition, meet the investors named above, and run 1:1 meetings with 300+ corporate buyers through Guardian Connect. If you are a founder reading this, the question is not whether DTM26 is worth your trip. It is whether you will be in the room or watching from your desk.
Every founder accepted into DTM26 gets access to Guardian Connect — DTM's curated 1:1 matchmaking format, where senior corporate decision-makers who hold budget meet pre-vetted founders in closed-door fifteen-minute conversations. Not a panel from across the room. Not a business card exchanged at a reception. A seat at the table with the person who decides whether your technology gets a pilot, a partnership, or a procurement contract.
The match-up is curated on both sides. Founders signal who they want to meet. Guardians choose who they take. The format works precisely because everyone in the room has a reason to be there.
Guardian community now spans 300+ senior leaders across more than 180 organisations. Below are seven Guardians confirmed for Berlin, weighted this week toward capital and venture-clienting roles. These are some of the people you can book a Guardian Connect meeting with:
Dr. Matthias Müller — Executive VP Corporate R&D and New Ventures, Schott. Runs both the central R&D function and the corporate venturing arm of one of Europe's most respected specialty glass and materials majors.
Lamin Ben-Hamdane — Global Head of Start-Up and Co-Innovation Program, Infineon. The entry point for any startup looking to plug into Europe's largest semiconductor company.
Richard Riggs — Investment Director, Aramco Ventures. One of the largest energy-focused CVCs globally. Riggs writes cheques in European energy innovation.
Shirley Beul-Leusmann — VP Business Development T Cloud, Deutsche Telekom. T Cloud is Deutsche Telekom's sovereign cloud play. A direct competitor lane to Azure and AWS in regulated European workloads.
Daniel Weber — Director Venture Clienting, Lufthansa Innovation Hub. One of the most disciplined corporate venture clienting operations in Germany.
Christian Steinborn — Head of Business Development Start-up Activities, Rheinmetall. Where Klaus Kappen sets the technology roadmap, Steinborn runs the programme that actually onboards new technology.
Gitte Bedford — VP, Bosch Ventures. One of Germany's most active deep tech CVCs, and a Bosch business unit on the other side of the door when a startup is ready for a customer.
This is not theoretical. Last year's Guardian Connect rounds produced signed PoCs, board introductions, and capital commitments.
