Where deep technology finds capital, infrastructure and time.
FORJA is a venture-backed accelerator for hard-tech startups. A public–private platform that replaces the single largest cost on a founder's cap table — building their own lab — with shared world-class engineering infrastructure, specialised operating mentorship and pre-seed capital.
Europe leads in deep-tech research. It lags in deep-tech ventures.
Hard-tech founders lose between eighteen and thirty-six months, and several million euros, assembling the laboratory capacity they need before their first prototype. That capital is absorbed by equipment, not by the science. FORJA exists to remove that burden and compress the industrial development cycle from five years to two.
Public infrastructure becomes venture infrastructure
A publicly-funded engineering facility — co-designed with technology centres and anchor universities — becomes the physical backbone of the programme. Startups access it in exchange for equity, not rent.
Specialised private capital alongside, not after
A hard-tech VC co-invests from day one with the public entity on a 50/50 basis. Financial discipline, commercial judgement and follow-on conviction live inside the programme, not outside of it.
Operator-grade mentorship, not advisory-board tokenism
Senior founders who have already built, scaled and exited industrial companies lead the cohorts. Mentors are compensated on equity aligned outcomes, not on visibility.
A single, clean deal with the founder.
Every company that enters FORJA receives infrastructure, capital and mentorship under one simple, investor-grade deal structure — designed to survive Seed and Series A due diligence without renegotiation.
Software accelerators do not work for companies that ship atoms.
The hard-tech founder's first eighteen months are consumed by three structural problems that software accelerators were never designed to solve.
CapEx absorption. Between €1–5M of the first fundraised round is spent standing up lab capacity — oscilloscopes, SEM time, 3D-printing rigs, environmental chambers — that the company will outgrow, depreciate, and under-utilise.
Talent gravity. Senior engineers join ventures that already have a laboratory. The absence of a physical workbench is the single most frequent reason early hard-tech hires fall through.
Investor legibility. A hard-tech company without an operating prototype is not yet a Seed-ready story. Most die between grant funding and Seed not because the science is weak, but because the commercial timeline cannot absorb the infrastructure gap.
Public capital, stranded. Europe already commits significant public funding to deep-tech research — much of which is returned or under-spent because grant vehicles are not structured to deliver industrial-grade outcomes. FORJA gives that capital a conversion layer.
FORJA closes all four gaps inside a single venture-grade platform.
A shared lab estate worth more than most Series-A rounds.
Six interconnected laboratories, a supporting technical workforce, and a shared stores function. Designed in partnership with established technology centres to avoid duplication and to plug directly into existing Catalan and European research infrastructure.
L1.Electronics & PCB Prototyping
Mixed-signal design benches, reflow and pick-and-place lines, high-frequency analysis, EMC pre-compliance, embedded test racks.
L2.Mechanical & Additive Manufacturing
CNC machining, industrial-grade FDM/SLA/SLS printing, metal sintering partnerships, CMM metrology and structural test rigs.
L3.Materials & Characterisation
Shared SEM/FTIR/XRD access through partner centres, thin-film deposition, tribology, accelerated ageing, failure analysis.
L4.Energy, Power & Thermal
Power electronics lab, battery cycling and safety testing, thermal chambers, high-current DC/AC benches, grid-emulation hardware.
L5.Robotics, Autonomy & Testing
Indoor test arena, sensor calibration, ROS-native integration benches, environmental rigs, low-speed mobility validation track.
L6.Cleanroom-adjacent & Wet-Lab Interface
Class-10K adjacent space for micro-assembly, photonics and biotech-adjacent prototyping, integrated with wet-lab partners for cross-discipline projects.
Public capital, private discipline.
A vehicle sized to deliver industrial returns without distorting the public mission. Governance is shared; investment decisions sit with the specialised VC; infrastructure decisions sit with the public entity and its technical partners.
From mandate to first cohort in twelve months.
Four phases, two years. The first eighteen months are structurally about governance, infrastructure and team. Everything else compounds from there.
Mandate & Vehicle
Months 0 – 3Memorandum of Understanding between the public entity and the VC; constitution of the investment vehicle; initial governance; binding site selection for the infrastructure anchor.
Infrastructure & Team
Months 3 – 9Laboratory design and procurement; partnership agreements with technology centres (Leitat, Eurecat, Tecnocampus and others); hiring of the managing team, senior mentors, engineers and lab technicians; digital and legal infrastructure.
Opening & Cohort One
Months 9 – 12Commissioning of the engineering platform; open call across European hard-tech communities; selection of cohort one; onboarding; formal programme launch.
Delivery & Demo Day
Year 1 – Year 2First cohort runs 12–18 months of engineering and commercial milestones; Demo Day with anchor Seed and Series A funds; launch of cohorts two and three; first follow-on deployments.
Scale & Portfolio
Year 2 – Year 10Steady-state: 16–24 startups admitted per year, ongoing follow-on deployment, reinvestment of realised gains into the public mission and into a new generation of Catalan and European hard-tech founders.
Operators, not intermediaries.
FORJA is led by founders and institutional engineers with first-hand operating experience. The founding circle combines entrepreneurial leadership with direct authority over Catalonia's most capable technology infrastructure.
José Antonio González Paz
Entrepreneur and operator with a track record across deep-tech venture building, corporate strategy and international commercial development. Origin and driving force behind FORJA.
Jordi Rodríguez
Senior figure at one of Southern Europe's leading applied-research technology centres. Strategic link between FORJA's engineering platform and Catalonia's existing laboratory estate.
Josep Lluís Checa
Leader inside Tecnocampus and the Maresme innovation ecosystem. Anchors FORJA's talent pipeline into engineering schools and regional industrial employers.
Roger Casals
Multi-time founder with international exits across cybersecurity and enterprise technology. Brings founder-grade mentorship and the commercial reality of building venture-scale companies.
Senior Startup Mentors, staff engineers and laboratory technicians will be recruited under the Phase 1 plan. An operating committee combining the public entity, the VC, and the anchor technology centres will formalise the final composition of the team. Named anchor partners reflect the founding dialogue and are subject to formal confirmation.
A private conversation with the founding team.
FORJA is being structured through direct engagement with senior public stakeholders and a short list of specialised European venture firms. This page exists to support that conversation. Requests for the full strategic brief, financial model and governance draft are handled by invitation only.