Dutch startups working on industry and manufacturing in 2026

More than 165 Dutch startups are focused in 2026 on challenges in industry and manufacturing. They come from diverse backgrounds: biotech, energy management, process automation, visual product development. What they share is that they drill down into processes that have traditionally been slow, manual or difficult to measure.

Companies in this field are rarely pure software businesses. Many of them combine digital tools with domain expertise in physical processes: how a factory floor operates, how proteins behave in a lab, how industrial machines consume energy. That makes their proposition more tangible, but also more complex to scale. In recent years, the inflow of capital into this segment has grown noticeably, partly driven by broader European attention to production sovereignty and the energy transition.

A selection of companies from the DutchStartup database illustrates how diverse the angles are, and what the common denominator is.

From the factory floor to the scientific lab

Baseboard Pro, based in Hellendoorn and founded in 2023, develops digital work instructions and quality control tools specifically for the manufacturing industry. The company targets a persistent problem: production workers still often rely on paper instructions or outdated digital formats that are difficult to keep current. By digitising those instructions and linking them to quality registration, Baseboard Pro aims to reduce the margin for error on the shop floor.

At the other end of the spectrum is Cradle, an Amsterdam-based biotech company founded in May 2021. Cradle accelerates protein design by combining machine learning with its own wet-lab research. The platform generates amino acid sequence variants with predictable properties, such as stability or binding affinity, compressing a process that in traditional settings can take years. According to the company, the discovery and development of protein-based products can proceed up to twelve times faster in commercially relevant projects. Customers including Novo Nordisk, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine and Novonesis are already using the platform. In November 2024, Cradle raised a Series B of $73 million, led by IVP, with participation from Index Ventures and Kindred Capital.

THE REAL MAG., based in Roermond and founded in 2019, takes a visual approach. The agency develops bespoke 3D configurators and AI-driven presentation tools for product brands. Customers such as AkzoNobel, Bosch, Komatsu and Sekisui use these tools to make product development and sales processes more accessible to decision-makers who do not have a technical background.

Energy as an industrial challenge

Sympower, founded in Amsterdam in 2015, addresses an aspect of industry that is becoming increasingly urgent as the energy transition progresses: the flexibility of industrial energy demand. The company connects companies' electrical assets, think machines, cooling installations and compressors, to national power grids, and temporarily adjusts the capacity of those assets through automated demand response. In doing so, Sympower helps not only the companies themselves to manage energy costs, but also grid operators to handle peak loads.

The scale is now considerable. Sympower manages more than 2.7 gigawatts of distributed energy assets across Europe and has more than 0.5 gigawatts of battery storage systems under management in Scandinavia. In September 2025, the company closed an extension of its Series B, partly financed by PGGM on behalf of pension fund PFZW. Total capital raised thereby amounts to approximately $80 to $81 million. Sympower has offices in five countries and employs around 244 people.

Sympower's growth illustrates a broader trend: industrial players are actively looking for ways to keep their energy consumption manageable as grid capacity becomes scarce and energy prices remain volatile. Software platforms that automatically manage that flexibility are filling a gap that grid operators and energy companies cannot fill themselves.

What these companies have in common

All of these startups focus on processes that were previously slow, manual or opaque, and make them faster, more measurable or less costly. That may sound obvious, but the approach differs fundamentally from the generic SaaS layer that dominated the previous decade. Companies in this segment build deep into specific industrial contexts. That requires longer sales cycles, domain-specific datasets and often a combination of hardware proximity and software.

A recurring pattern is the use of AI not as an end product, but as an accelerator of an existing, complex process. Cradle uses machine learning to compress laboratory work. Baseboard Pro uses it to make instructions dynamic and context-sensitive. THE REAL MAG. uses it to automate the production process for visual content. Sympower uses it for real-time control of industrial assets.

Also notable is the geographic spread. While many Dutch tech companies cluster around Amsterdam and Utrecht, companies such as Baseboard Pro are based in Hellendoorn and THE REAL MAG. in Roermond. That partly reflects where manufacturing itself is located: in the regions, not in the Randstad.

Funding and growth stage

Funding profiles in this segment vary considerably. Cradle raised relatively large international capital with its $73 million Series B, while companies such as Baseboard Pro and THE REAL MAG. are at an earlier stage. Sympower is in a growth phase with institutional investors, including a Dutch pension fund.

The presence of PGGM as an investor in Sympower signals that institutional capital is beginning to find its way into industrial climate technology. That represents a shift from a few years ago, when this type of investor in the Netherlands focused almost exclusively on real estate and listed funds.

For early-stage companies like Baseboard Pro, the challenge is building the body of evidence that larger industrial customers require before adjusting their production lines. That threshold is higher in manufacturing than in, say, the marketing technology sector: an error in a work instruction has immediate consequences on the floor.

For investors and policymakers, this cluster demonstrates that industrial AI and manufacturing technology in the Netherlands have grown into their own category alongside fintech and SaaS. The companies active here operate with longer time horizons, but address challenges, from energy efficiency to production sovereignty, that rank high on the European agenda. That makes the sector relevant both for venture capital and for public programmes aimed at industrial sustainability.