AMSTERDAM/BERLIN, Sept 23 (Reuters) – Dutch and German state-backed innovation agencies will pool resources to chase radical advances in AI chip architecture, a move Prime Minister Rob Jetten framed Wednesday as essential for reducing Europe’s dependence on American technical leadership.
The collaboration arrives at a moment when European governments face mounting pressure to secure their own semiconductor capabilities. Supply chain shocks and geopolitical tensions have pushed chip sovereignty to the top of the policy agenda across the continent.
The Dutch National Agency for Disruptive Innovation, known as NADI, launched this month with €500 million ($570 million) in public funding. Modeled on the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NADI represents the Netherlands’ bet on high-risk, high-reward research.
DARPA itself dates to 1958, born from the shock of Sputnik. Its early work seeded technologies that later became the internet, stealth aviation, and GPS.
Jetten has championed NADI as a centerpiece of his competitiveness agenda since taking office in February. He argued that Europe “cannot afford to innovate country by country” if it hopes to remain a serious contender.
Chips made an obvious starting point, according to NADI co-founder Jelle Prins. The Dutch ecosystem around ASML, the world’s leading supplier of lithography machines, pairs naturally with Germany’s research and manufacturing depth.
Under the agreement, NADI and Germany’s SPRIND will direct €40 million over 20 months toward small teams using AI to compress chip design timelines. The target: silicon optimized for both training and running AI models.
Prins noted that NVIDIA’s dominant chips, while powerful, handle inference tasks inefficiently. He likened using them to “doing your shopping with a truck” when a grocery cart would suffice.
Europe’s network of innovation agencies has grown steadily. France created AID in 2018, Germany launched SPRIND in 2019, and Britain followed with ARIA in 2023.
SPRIND’s head of challenges, Jano Costard, told Reuters the chip initiative aims for “several orders of magnitude acceleration” in a design cycle that currently stretches across years.
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