SPRIND and NADI Launch €40M AI-Native Chip Design Challenge for Europe

Germany's SPRIND and the Netherlands' new NADI agency committed €40M over 20 months to the AI-Native Chip Design Challenge — their first joint program — aimed at cutting chip development from years to weeks and strengthening Europe's sovereign AI capabilities. Stage 1 (Nov 2026-Jul 2027) picks seven teams at €2.6M each; Stage 2 shortlists three at €7M each. Focus is production-ready chips for AI training and inference. SPRIND's Jano Costard told Reuters the goal is 'several orders of magnitude acceleration' of chip design.