Luxinnovation Backs Record 1,000 Companies as AI Factory Takes Shape

Luxembourg's national innovation agency, Luxinnovation, supported a record 1,000 companies in 2025, drawing on more than 2,000 incoming requests across retail and wholesale trade, professional and scientific services, and ICT. Minister of the Economy, SMEs, Energy and Tourism Lex Delles and Luxinnovation CEO Mario Grotz presented the agency's annual report on 30 April 2026 and provided a first full-year update on the Luxembourg AI Factory, which is now operational with Luxinnovation as its single point of entry.

A reorganised agency

2025 was a transition year for Luxinnovation. Mario Grotz took over as CEO in March and the agency completed an operational and organisational overhaul intended to make its support more coherent. Services are now structured around four strategic pillars: Inspire, Assess & Accelerate, Connect and Fund — covering everything from raising awareness about innovation to grant funding and access to scale-up capital.

Delles framed the redesigned agency and the AI Factory as a single one-stop shop for Luxembourg's economic base. Innovation, he argued, is no longer a question of size or sector but of competitiveness and resilience for the wider economy. Grotz, in his first full-year report as CEO, said the agency had laid the foundations of the Luxembourg AI Factory while continuing to support innovative companies at an unusually high level.

The Fit 4 programme suite

Luxinnovation processed 61 applications in 2025 across its Fit 4 performance programmes — Fit 4 Digital, Fit 4 Sustainability, Fit 4 Innovation, and the recently introduced Fit 4 AI. More than a third of those applications came from craft businesses, an audience the agency has been actively trying to broaden.

The agency's flagship startup programme, Fit 4 Start, opened its sixteenth edition in July 2025 and drew a record 495 applications, with more than 60% from outside Luxembourg. A complementary programme — Fit 4 Scale — was developed during 2025 in line with the government's 2023 "From Seed to Scale" roadmap and began with five startups in March 2026 after a successful 2024 pilot. Nationally, 58 new startups were added to the Dealroom directory for Luxembourg in 2025, and Luxinnovation directly supported 41 entrepreneurs whose projects led to incorporation.

The Luxembourg AI Factory, year one

Announced in late 2024 with backing from the Ministry of the Economy, the Ministry of Research and Higher Education and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, the Luxembourg AI Factory is one of 19 AI Factories established within the EU. It is run by a consortium that includes the high-performance-computing operator LuxProvide, Luxinnovation, the Luxembourg National Data Service (LNDS), the University of Luxembourg, and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), alongside a wider network of public and private partners.

According to the figures presented on 30 April, the Factory has supported around 150 organisations since launch. Its service catalogue, unveiled at the Data Summit Luxembourg 2025, is built around six pillars covering the full life cycle of an AI project, from initial concept to large-scale production. Grotz described the design as an attempt to remove traditional barriers — fragmented infrastructure, scattered expertise, unclear funding routes — that have slowed AI adoption among smaller firms.

For Luxembourg's strategic sectors — finance, space, cybersecurity and the green economy — the Factory is positioned as a sovereign and compliant route into AI development, in line with the EU's regulatory framework. Its second supercomputer, Meluxina AI, is expected to come online between April and October 2026 at LuxProvide and will draw on the Clarence sovereign cloud built with Proximus and Google.

What it means

The combined Luxinnovation–AI Factory model is now Luxembourg's principal answer to a perennial small-economy question: how to give SMEs and craft businesses access to the same innovation ecosystem as larger firms. The 2025 results suggest demand is there. Whether the AI Factory's first full year of operation translates into measurable productivity gains for Luxembourg's wider business base will be the next test for both Delles and Grotz.