Europe spent the week on the unglamorous parts of deep tech: design tools, court filings and the law that lets a machine hand over a prescription.
Lead
The EU Opens a EUR 525 Million Design Platform for Chip Startups
The Commission launched the European Chip Design Platform on 4 November. European firms hold less than 1% of global chip design revenue, and Brussels argues new fabs only pay off if European designers fill them.
Startups can apply for grants of up to EUR 100,000 for a first prototype, and more advanced companies for up to EUR 16 million. The package is EUR 440 million in grants plus EUR 85 million for cloud infrastructure, support services and open-source tools.
Imec leads the consortium running it, which gives startups design software, IP blocks and manufacturing access in one place. Twenty startups are already in its venture development programmes.
Biotech & Life Sciences
T-Therapeutics Raises USD 133 Million to Reach Targets Antibodies Miss
The Cambridge spinout closed an oversubscribed Series B, taking its total funding to USD 224 million. Johnson & Johnson Innovation and Eli Lilly joined the round.
Its mice produce fully human T-cell receptors, which can see protein fragments from inside cells. The company wants to bring T-cell engagers, which work in blood cancers, to solid tumours.
It has not named its targets or trial dates, so the money buys a first clinical proof of concept and nothing more.
Novartis Walks Away From a BioArctic Brain-Delivery Deal
Novartis ended its August 2025 agreement with the Swedish company, cancelling up to USD 772 million in future payments. BioArctic keeps the USD 30 million upfront, and its shares fell more than 7% on Tuesday before recovering.
BioArctic says the decision concerns the Novartis programme only, not its BrainTransporter technology, which carries drugs across the blood-brain barrier. Its collaboration with Eli Lilly continues.
The test now is whether that partnership produces human data.
Quantum & Photonics
Four Dutch-Taiwanese Projects Aim to Make Photonics Easier to Manufacture
Four projects won funding under the Netherlands–Taiwan Techbridge Call. QuiX Quantum and Taiwan's Brillink will build photonic single-photon detectors that work near room temperature, aimed at fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Smart Photonics and Eindhoven University of Technology are working on a 3.2 terabit-per-second optical transceiver with Taiwanese partners. The pattern is Dutch photonic design paired with Taiwanese volume manufacturing.
Space
OHB Wins EUR 554 Million to Build the First Next-Generation Sentinel-3 Topography Satellite
OHB announced on 4 November that it will lead the consortium building the first Sentinel-3 NGT satellite for Copernicus, with an option on a second. It splits the current Sentinel-3 duties: this mission tracks ocean and ice surface height, while a separate optical mission handles colour and temperature.
The contract figure comes from OHB's own announcement, as relayed by European Spaceflight.
Materials & Manufacturing
Noak Raises EUR 5 Million to Take Perovskite Solar Out of the Lab
The Imec and Hasselt University spinout will use Energyville's Genk facilities to prepare for gigawatt-scale production. Tandem cells pair perovskite with silicon and promise 30 to 35% efficiency, against a practical ceiling near 27% for silicon alone.
Stability is the usual objection, and the founders answer it with five years of outdoor data from more than ten sites on three continents. The next step is proving it at scale.
Semiconductors
Nexperia Sues Its Chinese Owner and Its Founder in a Dutch Court
Nexperia said on Tuesday it has started proceedings in the Netherlands against Wingtech and founder Zhang Xuezheng, seeking compensation for what it calls significant harm. It gave no figure.
Wingtech has already sued in China for CNY 8 billion over the Dutch government's seizure of control. The dispute is now being fought in two jurisdictions.
One to watch
Estonia's Bill for Prescription Robot Pharmacies
The government approved a bill that would let automated pharmacies dispense prescription medicine around the clock, using digital ID and a video call with a licensed pharmacist. Parliament still has to pass it, and implementation is targeted for 1 March 2027.
Grab2Go spent two and a half years fighting the rule that a pharmacist must be on site, until a government innovation programme helped design the legal change. If it passes, Estonia would be the first European country to allow remote prescription dispensing, and the test is whether pharmacists and regulators elsewhere follow.
(Tech.eu)