IO’s Week: The birth of the Gerard & Anton Community

By Bart Brouwers

With a total of 1.4 billion in funding raised, almost four thousand employees, and a combined valuation of 4.2 billion euros, the Gerard & Anton Award winners have become a factor of significance. The award we created over nine years ago has now gained such a solid foundation that we can attach a complete community to it. Including its website, newsletter, relevant data, a forum for knowledge exchange, and a cool new event.

The circumstances at the launch were ideal: the Frits Philips Lounge (in the Eindhoven stadium bearing the same name, home to PSV) was filled with representatives of almost all former winners of a Gerard & Anton Award, and the network parties (companies, investors, supporting parties) needed to give them a small push forward.

And PSV also won its fifteenth consecutive game this season. Yeah!

Needless to say, we are very proud of this new addition to the IO family. We will keep you posted on its progress.

Bert-Jan Woertman, Beatrix Bos in the Frits Philips Lounge © Bram van Dal

A long arm and hairy teeth

Meanwhile, we also continue to wonder who calls the shots in high-tech geopolitics. Editor-in-chief Aafke Eppinga recently interviewed a series of experts to find out. That yielded the story that enticed Albert Jan to create this week’s cartoon. The new export restrictions imposed by the U.S. on (among others) ASML were serious enough for it. And with Aafke, he now wonders who has the longest arm.

The Veldhoven chip machine company grew to become the place where America and China fight out who has the most hair on their teeth. How happy we should be with that is still a big question even for most experts; some are now pinning their hopes on the EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI), which is soon to take effect. It is designed to counter economic coercion, but the question is whether ASML can make use of it — full insights on that in Aafke’s analysis.