Top AI Startups In The Netherlands

The Netherlands is one of Europe’s most active places for AI talent, according to research from Dealroom.co published with Prosus and Techleap. The country holds about 8% of Europe’s total AI talent pool even though it has 2.8% of the population. That concentration places the Netherlands well ahead of many larger neighbouring countries.

Amsterdam is the country’s main hub. Dealroom.co shows the city accounts for 37% of national AI talent and ranks as the fifth largest AI hub in Europe, with about 7,000 AI professionals. Other cities such as Utrecht, Eindhoven, Delft and Groningen also host clusters linked to universities and research centres.

Fabricio Bloisi, chief executive of Prosus, said: “The Netherlands has the foundations to become an ‘AI maker, not an AI taker.’ With high-income consumers, brilliant founders, and an abundance of talent, the country is uniquely positioned to lead in the next wave of innovation.”

What Is Happening With AI Startups And Funding?

Data from Tracxn shows the Netherlands hosts more than 63,304 startups across sectors, placing it tenth globally. Around 9,940 of these companies have raised funding, with total venture capital and private equity reaching $156B. 13 Dutch startups have reached unicorn status, according to Tracxn.

AI obviously accounts for a big portion of this scene. Dealroom.co counts 1,296 AI startups in the Netherlands, representing 9.5% of all startups in the country. On a per capita basis, that equals 15 AI startups per million people, lower than the UK and Germany but ahead of France.

Funding activity picked up early in 2026. Tracxn reports that $439M was raised across 14 equity rounds in the Netherlands up to February 2026. During the same period in 2025, companies raised $280M across 40 rounds. That’s a 56.88% rise in funding value YoY.

Later stage money is a bit harder to access. Dealroom.co reports that growth capital and large scale rounds trail leading European hubs such as London and Zurich, which affects how quickly AI companies scale.

How Much Trust And Adoption Exists With Dutch Users?

Public trust and everyday use fall behind the depth of talent. A global study by KPMG, cited in the Prosus and Dealroom.co report, shows low trust in AI applications among Dutch respondents compared with peers.

Only 43% of people in the Netherlands use AI on a semi regular basis, meaning every few months or more often, according to KPMG. That then leads to long sales cycles for AI products and slower take up across organisations.

Jelle Prins, co founder at Cradle, said: “Five years ago, the Netherlands was at the forefront. But today we are mostly using American AI models while our talent is leaving.”

He added: “The Netherlands is at risk of being unable to finance our welfare state if our industries become dependent on US built AI. This is the time to invest heavily to be able to control this fundamental technology.”

AI Startups In The Netherlands

The following are examples of startups making the Netherlands’ AI scene what it is today:

Kilo Code

Kilo Code is the fastest-growing AI coding agent making programming accessible to billions of people by prioritising transparency. Founded in 2025 on the belief that speed comes from openness – open-source, open and transparent pricing, and open model access. Kilo Code helps developers build smarter and faster delivering enterprise-grade performance, empowering every developer to code with speed, confidence, and trust.

Rather than building a proprietary, closed AI coding agent, Kilo Code is fully transparent, open-source, and community-driven, giving developers full visibility into how code is generated and executed. As a result, Kilo Code is now the number one choice on OpenRouter, has attracted over 500,000 users, and processes over 6.1 trillion tokens per month.

Beyond metrics, Kilo Code is built by developers for developers with a deep understanding of real-world coding workflows and pain points for developers and teams frustrated with black-box AI tools. There is a clear market need for openness as developers choose tools that give them full transparency and flexibility, without vendor lock-in or surprise. By focusing on openness, Kilo Code didn’t just grow quickly – it built a trusted community and a foundation for sustainable, long-term adoption.

Mews

Mews is a fast-growing hospitality technology startup headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, that has evolved from a property management system (PMS) to a full-featured cloud-native hospitality operating system. Founded in 2012 by Richard Valtr, the company’s mission is to transform the way hotels and other hospitality brands operate by combining automation, data, and AI to create more efficient operations and remarkable guest experiences.

Mews offers a cloud-native PMS that unifies reservations, front desk operations, payments, housekeeping, guest communications and revenue management into a single platform. Its intuitive interface and open API allow seamless integrations with over 1,000 third-party applications through the Mews Marketplace, reducing manual work while giving hoteliers more ways to personalise services.

Recently, Mews has been pushing the frontier of agentic AI. Mews features autonomous digital agents designed to assist in revenue optimisation, guest personalisation, operations, and workflow automation, signaling a shift beyond basic automation toward AI-driven decision support.

The company powers 12,500+ properties across 85+ countries and has attracted major funding rounds, including a recent $300M raise at a ~$2.5B valuation, reflecting strong investor confidence in its platform vision and AI strategy.
 

Orbisk

Orbisk helps professional kitchens run smarter. With AI-powered insights and automated tracking, food waste becomes instantly visible and manageable. The result: lower costs, more efficient operations, and an improved guest experience.
The technology automatically recognises, weighs, and logs food waste. Through a personalised dashboard, chefs and kitchen managers gain clear, actionable insight into what’s being wasted, when, and why. This makes it easier to align purchasing and preparation with actual demand.

Active in over 42 countries and with nearly 1,000 systems installed in hospitality venues and hotels worldwide, Orbisk is making a global impact. Since 2023, the company has been proudly B Corp certified, recognising its social and environmental commitment.
Smarter Kitchens. Seamless Savings.

AKA Foods

AKA Foods is a pioneering foodtech company transforming how new food products are created. Its proprietary platform, AKA Studio, combines advanced artificial intelligence with real human sensory data to accelerate research and development across taste, texture and aroma. Unlike generic AI tools, AKA Studio integrates each company’s tacit knowledge and disparate data sources into a private and secure system. This unique approach enables food companies to shorten development cycles, cut costs and deliver better products that consumers love.

For research and development teams, this integration shortens the innovation cycle from years to weeks by combining historical and ongoing R&D data, ingredient specifications, sensory feedback and regulatory documentation into a unified, intelligent framework. For business leaders, it transforms organisational knowledge into measurable innovation assets that improve productivity and profitability. For investors, it represents a defensible, category-defining technology at the intersection of AI and food science, augmented by sensory evaluation.

The underlying sensory-AI framework also holds potential for future applications in flavour, fragrance, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, where sensory evaluation and precision formulation are equally critical.

Duna

Duna positions itself as an AI native onboarding platform for businesses where compliance carries real weight. It replaces long email chains and manual checks with automated workflows that guide customers through onboarding journeys built to convert. According to the company, teams using Duna onboard customers 10.6x faster, lift conversion by 37%, and raise analyst productivity by 4.8x. The system bakes policy logic, audit records and explainable automation straight into everyday operations.

The product spans onboarding, decisioning and lifecycle monitoring. Businesses configure KYB checks, risk scoring and reviews across more than 20 modules, covering areas such as KYC, AML and identity checks. Duna also runs daily screening and automated re checks, while logging every action for audits. CCV Fiserv COO Jaap Remijn said the platform delivered five to ten times gains in operational productivity while lifting compliance quality, with a return on investment that made sense quickly.

Innatera

Innatera builds neuromorphic processors that process sensory data in a way closer to how the brain works. Its chips run on an analog mixed signal design and use spiking neural networks, where information flows through timed electrical events rather than constant calculations. This allows fast pattern recognition with very low power use and short response times.

The technology suits devices that need to stay active at all times but cannot draw much energy. Innatera’s processors handle sound, vision and motion data directly on the chip, rather than sending it to cloud servers. That local processing makes them suitable for latency sensitive environments where delays or high power draw are not acceptable.

3DUniversum

3DUniversum develops AI software rooted in academic research, with work spanning deep learning, machine vision and machine learning. The team builds tailored systems for healthcare, retail and industrial inspection, helping organisations apply AI in practical settings rather than experiments.

Alongside client work, the company has built its own products. WeScan lets users capture and share 3D spaces using LIDAR enabled Apple devices. FairFake produces controlled deepfake material for education and training, while Deep Therapy uses animated video to support communication with people who are hard to reach. Its inspection tools measure defects during production without halting manufacturing, using 3D scans to flag issues accurately.

ACS

ACS has worked on smart building technology since 2012, with Climatics acting as its core platform. The software gives building managers real time insight into energy use and system behaviour through a single dashboard. ACS says Climatics helps buildings meet GACS requirements while making technical management easier.

The platform continuously monitors installations and flags faults early, helping systems run as intended. ACS guarantees at least 10% lower total energy use for customers through data driven optimisation and intelligent control settings. A digital twin shows every connected component at a glance, allowing quicker responses to inefficiencies and smoother day to day operation.

AI Heroes

AI Heroes runs hands on workshops designed to help teams work confidently with artificial intelligence. Rather than lectures, the company works on site with staff until concepts land and practical skills stick. Its AI Foundations sessions introduce teams to everyday use cases, while specialist tracks cover advanced prompting and custom language model work.

The team also runs opportunity scouting sessions that examine how organisations spend time and money, then map out where AI can make a real difference. Founded in 2019 and based in Groningen, AI Heroes works with startups, public bodies and larger organisations, adapting sessions to each team’s needs and level of experience.