Germany’s Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation (SPRIND) and the Netherlands’ National Agency for Disruptive Innovation (NADI) launched a €40 million AI-Native Chip Design Challenge on 23 September 2026, Tech.eu reported. The agencies plan to fund teams developing AI-driven methods for chip design in NADI’s first programme, announced eight days after the Dutch government formally unveiled the agency.
Key points
- The €40 million challenge is planned to run for 20 months in two stages.
- Seven teams are to receive €2.6 million each in Stage 1; three are to receive €7 million each in Stage 2.
- The agencies aim to reduce chip development timelines from years to weeks and produce designs for AI training and inference.
- The Dutch government has allocated €500 million to NADI, which it formally announced on 15 September.
NADI begins with a €500 million allocation
Dutch Economic Affairs Minister Heleen Herbert formally announced NADI on 15 September, Prinsjesdag, the Netherlands’ annual Budget Day. The government allocated €500 million to the agency and intends to become an early customer for technologies it backs, EU-Startups reported. NADI is designed to fund challenge programmes addressing technological problems facing the Netherlands and Europe.
The agency draws on the ARPA approach used by SPRIND, established in 2019, and the UK’s ARIA, established in 2022. Herbert asked entrepreneur and Cradle founder Jelle Prins and deep-tech investor Beau-Anne Chilla to build NADI. Both had served on the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs’ NADI expert panel. Its formation followed an open letter from universities, medical centres, investors and companies including Philips and NXP.
The Wennink Report, led by former ASML chief executive Peter Wennink, recommended a Dutch government commitment of €1.5 to 2 billion for NADI’s deployment budget. That recommendation exceeds the €500 million allocated to the agency, Konsulteer reported. The allocation and the report’s proposal concern NADI as a whole, rather than the funding awarded under this chip design challenge.
SPRIND brings its Challenges model across borders
SPRIND has advised the Dutch government on NADI’s creation, according to Prins, NADI’s co-founder. He said the joint challenge would give the Dutch agency another opportunity to learn from SPRIND’s experience. For SPRIND, the partnership follows a joint Challenge with Sweden’s Vinnova and forms part of its work with innovation bodies outside Germany.
SPRIND’s Challenges model has committed more than €100 million across Europe in 2026. SPRIND is providing most of the money for the new programme, with NADI contributing the remainder, Tech.eu reported. The agencies’ joint funding gives teams a route to support through successive stages, rather than a single award at the start.
Jano Costard, SPRIND’s Head of Challenges, called the launch “a huge statement of Europe’s intent to combine two of the continent’s greatest strengths: collaboration and innovation”. He said SPRIND expected more countries to back pan-European programmes. That expectation is SPRIND’s; the announced funding for this challenge comes from the German and Dutch agencies.
AI-Native Chip Design targets years-to-weeks development
The agencies want teams to apply AI models and reinforcement-learning agents to engineering and optimisation tasks in chip design, with autonomous design as a longer-term goal. They also aim to produce chip designs ready for production for high-performance AI training and inference, with improved energy efficiency, scalability and inference costs among the programme’s objectives. Cutting development time from years to weeks is a target of the challenge, not a result it has achieved.
Chip design is among the most expensive and technically demanding engineering disciplines, while Europe relies on the US and China for semiconductor supply, EU-Startups reported. The challenge brings the Netherlands’ semiconductor industry, described as a €33.6 billion sector anchored by ASML, together with German research and industrial production. The agencies are funding design methods and potential chip designs, with technical and commercial coaching planned to help participating teams bring their work towards market.
The challenge is scheduled to run for 20 months. Stage 1 is planned to select seven teams, each receiving €2.6 million, and Stage 2 is planned to narrow the field to three teams receiving €7 million each. Further financing details and dates for Stage 1 are still to be confirmed, EU-Startups reported.
SPRIND and NADI plan to begin Stage 1 in November 2026 and run it through July 2027. The agencies then plan to run Stage 2 for a further year.
