Alphabeats, Eindhoven startup for mental training via music, declared bankrupt

Eindhoven-based startup Alphabeats Works B.V. was declared bankrupt on 17 December 2025 by the Oost-Brabant court. The company, founded in 2019 by Han Dirkx and Jur Vellema and headquartered at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, developed an app that adjusted music in real time based on brainwaves to bring users into a state of deep relaxation or focus. Mr. J.W.P. Tulfer has been appointed as receiver.

Alphabeats focused primarily on elite athletes. Using a headband, the app measured alpha waves, after which the music was subtly adjusted to steer the user's mental state. At the time of the bankruptcy, the company had approximately 300 paying customers, too small a base to cover its ongoing costs.

The total debt amounts to less than €200,000. This is relatively limited, partly because the company had already reduced its costs and laid off staff at an earlier stage.

Hoped-for Apple partnership never materialised

A significant factor in Alphabeats' downfall was the failure of an anticipated collaboration with Apple. The company had counted on a breakthrough in which its technology would be integrated into Apple products such as AirPods. That integration would have substantially expanded the app's reach. When the partnership did not come to fruition, the company lacked the scale needed to continue growing.

Compounding this, Alphabeats was dependent on external suppliers for the headbands required to measure brainwaves. That dependency made the company vulnerable when distribution failed to take off through a major platform partner.

The company had previously run a neurofeedback pilot with Garmin and collaborated with professional sports clubs, but these partnerships did not generate sufficient commercial traction.

Despite funding and recognition

A lack of recognition or funding was not the direct cause of the bankruptcy. Around 2022, Alphabeats raised approximately €1.5 million from a tech fund in which ASML and Philips, among others, participated. The company also received support from the Ministry of Economic Affairs. In addition, a grant of €165,000 from early 2024 was recorded in the DutchStartup database.

In 2023, Alphabeats won a Gerard & Anton Award, a prize awarded to promising technology companies in the Brainport region. That same year, the company also won an award at the CES Innovation Awards in Las Vegas, an international technology trade show.

That recognition did not translate into a sufficiently large customer base. With 300 paying users, revenue structurally fell short of costs, even after the headcount had already been reduced.

Position within Brainport and the broader context

Alphabeats fit the profile of the Brainport region around Eindhoven, where hardware and software companies in the health and technology sectors have relatively easy access to knowledge networks, subsidies, and corporate partners such as ASML and Philips. Nevertheless, the case illustrates that this infrastructure offers no guarantee when a product depends on a single major distribution partner for scale.

For other Dutch healthtech startups combining consumer hardware with an app subscription model, this is a recognisable pattern. The technology and the accolades may be in place, but without a broad distribution network or a large platform partner to carry the product, it is difficult to reach the tipping point at which revenue exceeds fixed costs. Investors and policymakers in the region will be asking to what extent startups in this segment receive adequate guidance in building alternative distribution routes, so that a company's fate does not hinge on a single partnership.