European AI Startup Landscape is growing with the joining of the Netherlands and Norway. The Dutch AI Coalition (NLAIC) had announced in November last year that it will join the European AI Startup Landscape. The updated version of the European AI landscape was presented today during this year’s virtual Swedish Innovation Days to welcome AI startups from the Netherlands.
The European AI Startup Landscape was first launched at the end of 2020 with over 500 startups from Germany, France and Sweden. With the Netherlands officially joining and Norway set to join soon, the European AI Startup Landscape will be able to better map the AI startup ecosystem in Europe.
Together with the regional AI Hubs, the NLAIC and editorial staff of ai.nl, the final selection was made for the European AI Startup Landscape.
European AI Startup Landscape: what does this initiative aims to achieve
AI is evolving rapidly and it won’t be possible for an individual company to build every element of artificial intelligence. The European AI Startup Landscape aims to make building AI tools and services a collaborative effort not just between companies but between countries. The landscape acts as a centralised database for AI startups to work and collaborate with.
The initiative began as a brainchild of appliedAI by UnternehmerTUM (Germany), Ignite Sweden, AI Sweden and RISE Research Institutes of Sweden (Sweden). They started the initial process of mapping the AI startup ecosystem in Europe. The announcement today that the Dutch AI startups have joined this initiative and Norway will join soon will lead to wider collaboration between AI startups in these countries.
The map will get even more precise with support from The Netherlands AI Coalition, NORA (Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Research Consortium), Cluster for Applied AI and Norwegian Open AI Lab. The European AI Startup Landscape will help AI startups from the Netherlands and Norway with guidance and a visible platform. This will not only help the AI startups from these countries but the initiative to drive the adoption of AI.
The database will also help corporations and SMEs to find quality AI startups to partner with for their products and services. The startups joining the European AI Startup Landscape have AI at their core and have been verified by the organisation of their respective country.
The European Union has been vying to become the third major player after the US and China in the AI landscape globally. The efforts made by the European AI Startup Landscape shows the innovation made by European startups and also highlights the collaborative spirit among these startups to help Europe gain technological sovereignty in the AI landscape.
Dutch AI innovation at the forefront
The Dutch entrepreneurs have been embracing AI faster than most other European countries. They are starting companies that have AI at their core and are solving some of the major issues faced by society. A number of Dutch companies have also shown interest in adopting AI solutions but are lacking guidance on how AI will benefit their organisation.
With the European AI Startup Landscape, these Dutch companies will not only be able to find AI partners easily but also get support on their transition to become an AI-fuelled organisation. The launch today saw 127 new Dutch AI startups being added to the landscape.
Anita Lieverdink, Program Manager at the NLAIC, says, “It’s great that the Netherlands is participating in the European AI startup landscape. It’s a fantastic way to promote our selected startups on an international level and thereby increase their access to potential customers, partners and investors.”
Dutch AI startup Serket won UiPath Automation Award for advancing agriculture last year. Hadrian raised €2.5M pre-seed round to build an AI-powered autonomous proactive security solution. Amberscrpt raised 8 mln euro for their AI translation services. With NLAIC officially joining European AI Startup Landscape, startups like Serket and Hadrian will benefit in terms of exposure.
Collaboration is key to AI success
The European AI Startup Landscape acts as a bridge between startups and fully developed companies. All companies will require a broad selection of AI solutions as they advance their digitisation and adoption of cloud services. Startups, however, focus on a specific niche and are better positioned to deliver a scalable, reliable AI solution to these fully developed companies.
Another advantage will be the ability of these AI startups to train their solutions on a varied set of data and thus improve their service faster than a traditional company. The big corporations will also be able to get rid of challenges like the development of new roles, adoption of processes, collection of data and upskilling the existing workforce by adopting AI solutions from these startups.
Apart from acting as a bridge between startups and fully developed companies, the European AI Startup Landscape will also foster collaboration within the ecosystem. One of the examples is the European AI Matchday hosted by Ignite Sweden. With 114 meetings between 21 corporates and 78 AI startups from France, Germany and Sweden, the European AI Matchday highlights the importance of collaboration to succeed within AI in Europe.
The landscape collaborators plan to bring more such events in the coming year allowing more startups and corporates from around Europe to collaborate and challenge one another. With Norwegian partners joining and accepting applications from AI startups throughout Norway, the landscape has never looked stronger than it does right now. Will this lead to Europe leapfrogging the US and China in terms of the AI ecosystem? Only time will tell.