New entrepreneurial hub to make one in ten DTU start-ups a growth company

DTU SkyFactory is a new scale-up hub that DTU will use to help solve one of the biggest challenges facing Europe: poor competitiveness.

This will happen by offering start-ups with scale-up potential a 3–5-year entrepreneurial programme that can take them from the start-up phase to a growth stage of international importance.

“In Europe, we haven’t been good enough at encouraging ideas and technologies with significant scale-up potential. With DTU SkyFactory, we want to drive this change, so we can contribute to creating jobs, growth, and tech excellence in Europe,” says DTU President Anders Bjarklev.

In close collaboration with Marianne Thellersen, DTU’s Executive Vice President for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, he has spent the last 10 years promoting DTU’s innovation work. As a result, in 2024 DTU was in the top three for patent applications in Denmark, DTU-based start-ups attracted 21 per cent of total venture capital invested in Denmark that year, and 120 start-ups emerged from DTU. Now, the University is ready to help start-ups become scale-ups.

“Given the critical mass of start-ups established at DTU, it makes sense for us to expand our innovation ecosystem and fill out the growth gap in the value chain. If you’re a start-up and ready to grow quickly, you will now also be able to obtain help,” says Marianne Thellersen.

High ambitions

Mikkel Sørensen, current director of the innovation hub DTU Skylab and advisor to the EU on innovation, will head DTU SkyFactory. And he has big ambitions on behalf of the university.

“The goal is that every tenth start-up originating from DTU should have scale-up potential and the support needed to realize it, and with it the enormous innovation potential that the Draghi report on European competitiveness suggests Europe possesses,” says Mikkel Sørensen.

He is internationally recognized for fostering strong university innovation environments, including DTU Skylab where he will continue to serve as director.

In collaboration with the rest of DTU’s innovation ecosystem , Mikkel Sørensen will build a DTU SkyFactory where start-ups holding considerable potential can obtain support with strategic development, operational support, access to infrastructure and capital, and where help is available for everything from team composition to international partnerships.

“DTU has the talent, experience, and skills to succeed, but we can’t do it alone. To create a Danish scale-up environment with international impact, we need to raise funding and bring together the strongest forces from industry and the investor community. We have ten years of experience at doing this, so I believe we can do it again,” he says.

Innovation at all levels

In 2025, a pilot programme for DTU SkyFactory will start, and which will include the first start-ups with scalability potential.

Meanwhile, the focus on supporting all start-ups will continue, emphasizes the University's Executive Vice President for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Marianne Thellersen, who is behind DTU SkyFactory.

“At DTU, we work with start-ups at all levels—from apps to high-tech deep tech companies with growth potential. We will continue to prioritize working with the start-ups that will not necessarily be part of DTU SkyFactory,” she says.

DTU SkyFactory will be located at the universities campus in Lyngby.