Keiron raises €20.7M to replace the process behind 70% of printed circuit board defects

Keiron (Eindhoven) has raised €20.7 million in a Series A round co-led by Invest-NL, DeepTechXL, and Waves Capital, with Ramphastos Investments, ATUM Ventures, Cottonwood Technology Fund, and TNO Ventures also participating. The company was founded in 2019 by Paul Rooimans as a spinout from TNO Holst Centre — a collaboration between Dutch research organisation TNO and Belgian semiconductor institute imec. DeepTechXL led Keiron's earlier seed round and returns as a co-lead for the Series A, the sharpest conviction signal in the syndicate.

The problem: stencils and the PCBA defect cascade

Solder paste printing is, by the company's account, the single biggest point of failure in global electronics assembly. The process deposits solder paste onto printed circuit boards before components are placed and reflowed — and when it goes wrong, Keiron claims more than 70% of PCBA defects trace back to it. The market it underpins is large: electronics assembly is a segment of an industry worth over €600 billion a year.

The conventional method uses a physical stencil — a precision metal sheet with apertures matching the circuit board's layout — to force paste through contact. Each new product design, board revision, or component change can require a new stencil; smaller apertures for finer-pitch components push the method toward its physical limits. Keiron's argument is that stencil printing is a structural constraint on electronics quality and speed, not a calibration problem that more-careful setup can solve.

LiFT: digital by design

Keiron's HF2 printer deposits solder paste using Laser-Induced Forward Transfer (LiFT) — a fully digital, non-contact process requiring no physical stencil. The board's layout is programmed; the laser fires; paste lands precisely where it needs to. The company claims first-pass yield improves from an industry-typical ~60% to above 95%, production lead time halves, uptime doubles, and programming is ten times faster than conventional setup. The HF2 consolidates what is currently three separate line stations — stencil printer, jet printer, and SPI inspection system — onto a single digital platform.

The AI hardware connection is real rather than decorative. Next-generation AI chip packages carry up to 10,000 interconnects per component; at that density, conventional stencil printing degrades and yields fall sharply. A digital, parameterised process that reprograms per-design without a new physical stencil is structurally better suited to the manufacturing demands of AI infrastructure than any refinement of the stencil approach.

The Series A funds production scaling and commercial expansion across Europe, North America, and APAC, alongside R&D on next-generation LiFT platforms. TNO remains Keiron's primary strategic research partner; TNO Ventures participates in the round.

"Solder paste printing has been the industry's most expensive open secret for decades," said Paul Rooimans. "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."

What the next 18 months must show: whether tier-1 EMS customers reference the HF2 publicly at production volume; whether the yield claims hold across the product variety a real electronics line runs; and whether multi-continental expansion is executable on a Series A budget in a sector where local service infrastructure is non-optional.