News item | 10-03-2022 | 17:00
The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate (EZK) and Invest-NL are jointly launching the Deep Tech Fund (DTF). The DTF will invest in knowledge-intensive start-ups and scale-ups in sectors such as photonics, quantum technology, nanotech and high tech to strengthen the technological knowledge and international competitive position of the Netherlands. The size of the fund is €250 million, of which €175 million will be contributed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy and the remainder by Invest-NL.
The DTF supports knowledge-intensive start-ups and scale-ups to strengthen the technological knowledge and international competitive position of the Netherlands. The DTF wants to invest in companies with innovative, complex technology. For innovative companies that are both knowledge and capital intensive, it is often difficult to find financing. In most cases, these are new technologies that have not yet proven themselves and that involve relatively high risks.
Minister Micky Adriaansens (Economic Affairs and Climate): “It is important to support innovative technology in the Netherlands at an early stage. This helps to keep our economy globally competitive and to maintain our prosperity and security. Knowledge-intensive start-ups and scale-ups need sufficient capital to be able to grow and scale up further. The Deep Tech Fund helps these companies with financing to further develop their promising, complex technologies.”
Wouter Bos (CEO of Invest-NL): “The opportunities in the Netherlands for industries that require a long horizon, with high investments, and high returns once they succeed, are still limited. That is often in the financing. We are confident that the DTF will make a positive contribution to making capital available to these companies, so that they can continue to grow and thus contribute to the Netherlands of tomorrow.”
The fund operates as a co-investment fund and is incorporated as an independent part of Invest-NL. The fund has a specialized focus on deep tech and has independent fund management and an independent Investment Committee (IC) which provides binding advice. The IC of the DTF is made up of Frits van Hout, Hans Büthker, Aruna Subramanian, Eline Vrijland and Steven Tan.