July 6, 2023
On June 29 and 30, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg hosted its annual digital technology conference, ICT Spring, welcoming more than 500 corporates and start-ups from Europe, North America, and Asia. With a focus on topics such as finance & technology, cyber & quantum computing, big data & cloud, and AI, global industry experts, corporate executives, investors, and entrepreneurs populated the conference’s stages.
FDI Center’s Director, Dr. Kim J. Zietlow was invited to host ICT Spring’s Digital Transformation stage for half a day. He engaged with speakers such as three Luxembourg’s former Chief Information Officers of the past years, various CEOs of cybertechnology, supercomputing, and multi-cloud data center companies and the Managing Director of the fastest-growing technology company in the world, Deel.
The underlying topic of these sessions was Luxembourg’s attractiveness for digital businesses. Discussions circled around opportunities for local and foreign companies with digital and cloud-based business models, IT infrastructure, and IT services in the Grand Duchy. In sum, the availability of workforce with technology skills, an advanced IT infrastructure, and a strong ecosystem of technology startups and organizations are the main factors driving Luxembourg’s growing FDI numbers for such businesses.
Additionally, Kim moderated the grand finale of Mastermind Challenge, ICT Spring’s startup competition, where the 8 winners of the qualification round pitched their startups in front of an international jury of renowned venture capitalists. The winner was Arxy Future Lab, a fashion technology startup from Luxembourg.
Kim concluded that ICT Spring is an established business platform for international technology companies and startups alike. However, he shares the view with local government stakeholders that Luxembourg is missing its own investment conference to support its strong ambitions in attracting more FDI in industries such as life sciences, space, and cleantech and to defend its top position in attracting the most FDI projects per capita in Europe.
