Cyprus now hosts more than 150 deep-tech start-ups, backed by almost €1 billion in competitive research and innovation funding secured over the past decade. Venture capital firm 33East presented those figures at the 7th DeepTech CY Meetup on September 23, held at the University of Cyprus' Faculty of Engineering — the first time the community event has taken place inside a university.

Dionysis Partsinevelos of 33East, who presented the results of a year-long mapping exercise, said the start-ups span health and biotechnology, energy and climate, applied artificial intelligence, robotics, defence and space.

The funding picture is unusually strong for the island's size. Cyprus has secured more competitive EU research funding per head of population than any other member state under both Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, according to Partsinevelos. That money has supported seven centres of excellence and 22 European Research Council grants hosted on the island.

The commercialisation gap

For R&D managers and investors, the mapping's sharpest finding sits in the split between grant-backed and venture-backed companies. Roughly half of the identified start-ups have received support from the Research and Innovation Foundation or EU programmes. A smaller number have gone on to raise private venture capital.

That gap between research funding and private investment dominated the evening's discussion, as both the Research and Innovation Foundation and private investors expand their support for early-stage companies.

Partsinevelos placed the Cyprus data against a wider European shift. Deep tech now accounts for around one third of European venture capital investment, more than double its share a decade ago, and research shows European deep-tech companies reaching billion-dollar valuations faster than other start-ups.

Community infrastructure

The meetup series began earlier in 2026 as a grassroots event, launched by Andrei Yarantsaeu and Oleg Reshetnikov for people building technology on the island. Partsinevelos and Evangelia Athanasiou, Ventures Associate at Plug and Play Cyprus, have since joined as co-organisers. The latest edition was supported by Cyprus Seeds, one of the island's main research commercialisation platforms.

Opening the event, Faculty of Engineering Dean Marina Neophytou said industry and entrepreneurship must increasingly become pillars supporting the faculty's students, alongside its academic mission, pointing to progress made in recent years.

A panel moderated by Yiannis Eftychiou, co-founder and General Partner at 33East, examined what Cyprus still needs to move more research out of laboratories and into companies. Speakers included Margarita Chli, Professor of Robotic Vision at the University of Cyprus and Visiting Professor at ETH Zurich; Anastasia Constantinou, who heads the Innovation Management Sector at UCY's Research and Innovation Support Service; Anixi Antonakoudi, Director of Innovation at The Cyprus Institute; Maria Markidou Georgiadou, Executive Director and Founder of Cyprus Seeds; and Charis Christofi, co-founder and chief executive of Orom AI.

Structural obstacles

The discussion identified the legislative framework governing university spin-outs, intellectual property ownership and researchers' participation in companies as remaining structural obstacles — areas that can directly affect how quickly research reaches the market.

Constantinou outlined how the University of Cyprus' Innovation Management Sector supports researchers through licensing, contract research and incubation, and what steps are being taken to shorten the route from laboratory work to company formation.

Chli drew on her experience at both the University of Cyprus and ETH Zurich, one of Europe's most prolific sources of university spin-outs, to describe how academics can move closer to entrepreneurship and which institutional conditions ease that transition — adding an international comparison on the relationships between researchers, universities, investors and founders.

Cyprus Seeds was highlighted as an organisation directly supporting research commercialisation on the island, including university spin-outs that have emerged in recent years. The Cyprus Institute served as an example of how founders can draw on a research institution's facilities, scientific expertise and infrastructure both before founding a company and after incorporation.

From the start-up side, Orom AI — co-founded by Christofi and included in 33East's mapping — was cited as an example of what local founders can build when they choose to develop novel technology on the island.

After the fireside session, the university opened several engineering laboratories for guided tours, and attendees were encouraged to consider how the facilities could serve their own research and technology ventures. The evening closed with a networking session connecting academia, investment, research and entrepreneurship.

Whether the €1 billion research base converts into a proportionate share of private capital will likely decide how quickly the next cohort of Cypriot deep-tech companies scales.