This €24.5M Round Could Fix Electronics Manufacturing's Costliest Problem

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-31

### A Big Bet on a Tiny Problem If you've ever wondered why your smartphone, laptop, or car's computer system occasionally fails, the answer might surprise you. It's often not the fancy chips or complex software. It's something far more mundane: solder paste printing. This process is the single biggest point of failure in a global electronics assembly market worth over $650 billion a year. For decades, manufacturers have simply lived with this flaw because no one could fix it at the root. That might finally be changing. Keiron Printing Technologies, a DeepTech company based in Eindhoven, has just closed a $24.5 million Series A round to tackle this exact problem. The funding was co-led by Invest-NL, DeepTechXL, and Waves Capital, with participation from Ramphastos Investments, ATUM Ventures, Cottonwood Technology Fund, and TNO Ventures. The company's goal is ambitious: to eliminate solder paste printing defects entirely, not just patch them. ### The Hidden Cost of an 'Open Secret' Solder paste printing is the process of applying solder to a circuit board before components are placed. It sounds simple, but it's incredibly delicate. The company notes that this step is responsible for over 70% of PCBA (Printed Circuit Board Assembly) defects. That's a staggering number when you consider how many electronic devices are produced every single day. The problem is that traditional methods use stencils or jets, which are mechanical and prone to errors. These methods quietly cap the reliability, speed, and yield of every electronics manufacturer on the planet. It's a bottleneck that has been accepted as just part of the cost of doing business. ### A Digital, Contactless Revolution Founded in 2019 as a spin-off from TNO Holst Centre, Keiron has developed what it claims is the world's first fully digital, contactless solder-paste printing solution. Their HF2 LiFT Printer doesn't tweak the old playbook; it replaces it entirely. It combines the functions of a stencil printer, jet printer, and inspection system into one platform. The results are impressive. The company reports that first-pass yield jumps from an industry-typical 60% to above 95%. Production lead time is cut in half because there are zero stencils to create or change. Uptime doubles, and programming becomes 10 times faster. For manufacturers, this translates into higher throughput, lower working capital, and stronger cash flow. ### Why This Matters for AI Hardware The timing couldn't be better. Next-generation AI hardware relies on components with up to 10,000 interconnects. This complexity pushes conventional solder paste printing past its breaking point, leaving yields extremely low. That's exactly the gap Keiron's LiFT process was built to close. > "Solder paste printing has been the industry's most expensive open secret for decades," said Paul Rooimans, CEO and founder of Keiron. "This round lets us do exactly what the market has been asking for: put the HF2 on more lines, faster, without giving up an ounce of the precision that sets LiFT precision printing apart." ### The Road Ahead The company plans to use the new capital to drive aggressive growth. That means increasing production capacity, expanding commercial and support operations across Europe, North America, and APAC, and accelerating R&D on their next-generation LiFT platform. The technology, which originated at TNO Holst Centre, continues to be developed with TNO as a key strategic partner. Hessel Mittelmeijer, Investment Manager at DeepTechXL, believes the time is right. "AI, defence growth, and increasing manufacturing complexity are accelerating the need for digital transformation in EMS," he said. Keiron is positioning itself to be at the center of that transformation, carrying the legacy PCBA industry into Industry 4.0.