Overview
Hybrid Core is a European deep tech company headquartered at Da Vincilaan 1 in Zaventem. It was registered as a besloten vennootschap on 18 August 2020 and has been an employer since January 2022. The company's platform, Smart Navigator, runs entirely within the client's own infrastructure and is built from six modules: FusionX, NetCortex, FocusVision, Synth-Terra, Q-Sentinel and AxionIQ. Target sectors are defence and national security, law enforcement, finance and banking, and energy and utilities. Hybrid Core employs 31 specialists in four teams: AI, post-quantum and cyber security, simulation and twins, and platform engineering. It reports deployments in more than 10 countries on 3 continents. Smart Navigator was named a Top Exploration by the Next Generation Internet Explorers team in October 2020, and in December 2021 the company started a collaboration with NJIT under that programme. In September 2024 Suzen received the Smart & Secure Digital Transformation CEO of the Year award at the European CEO Awards, and in April 2025 the World Economic Forum's UpLink platform listed Hybrid Core as a Top Innovator. The company presented Smart Navigator at FEINDEF 2025 in Madrid.
Stated facts & numbers
- Founded: 2020 (registered 18 August 2020)
- Headquarters: Zaventem
- Legal form: BV, enterprise number 0752.691.888
- Founder & CEO: Hasan Suzen
- Employees: 31
- Product: Smart Navigator (FusionX, NetCortex, FocusVision, Synth-Terra, Q-Sentinel, AxionIQ)
- Sectors: Defence and national security, law enforcement, finance and banking, energy and utilities
- EU projects: EuropeanCity2, INNOVADE, EuroHub4Sino, KT4D (Horizon Europe); EU-HYBNET (Horizon 2020)
- Recognition: WEF UpLink Top Innovator (2025); NGI Explorers Top Exploration (2020)
Key people
In the news
- In two days, under Article 40 of the Chips Act, the European Commission must submit its first evaluation to Parliament and Council. The European Court of Auditors already expects the headline 20%-by-2030 target to land near 11.7%. Our new article argues that number measures the wrong sovereignty question. Chip fabrication takes a decade. Reasoning sovereignty — who governs the intelligence running on whatever chip is available — does not have to wait for it. Smart Navigator was built on that separation: seven integrated modules,
- We're proud to share that Hybrid Core has been selected as a finalist for the Startup World Cup Brussels 🇧🇪. Thank you to Startup&Angels for putting together such a strong finalist lineup, and to co-hosts Le Village by CA Brussels and BeCentral for building the room where this happens. On 30 September, we'll pitch in front of an investor-led jury at Degroof Petercam in Brussels — one step on the way to representing Belgium at the Global Grand Finale in San Francisco. Congratulations to the fellow finalists we'll share the stage
- European buyers have been offered a false choice: AI that adapts to how you actually work, or AI that stays inside your walls. Not both. Cloud AI vendors are adaptive but not sovereign. Traditional defence primes are sovereign but not adaptive. The intersection has been empty — and it is exactly where ministries, banks and grid operators need to buy. Hybrid Core's Smart Navigator now runs Operationalised AI across all seven modules. Not AI as architecture. AI as a capability the user touches: ▪ Ontology-bound reasoning — generate
- From 1 October, EU importers of covered steel products must declare the country where their steel was actually melted and cast — proven primarily by a mill test certificate and heat number, backed by a 50% out-of-quota tariff if the claim doesn't hold. Verifying that at scale isn't a filing exercise, it's a network problem: the same certificate issuer behind implausibly scattered origins, the same heat number reappearing where it shouldn't. Our new article sets out how FusionX, NetCortex, FocusVision and Synth-Terra surface that
- On 18 November 2025, the EU's supervisory authorities designated nineteen providers as critical to the financial sector's own technology under DORA. 2026 is the year that designation starts to bite: a fresh Register of Information cycle is under way, and Joint Examination Teams are expected to move from data collection to first comprehensive examinations. Our new article looks at what that asks of institutions that can only answer a concentration-risk question — who shares the same subcontractor as whom — with a spreadsheet, not a
- On 11 September the EU Cyber Resilience Act's vulnerability and incident reporting obligation went live: manufacturers of connected products must report an actively exploited vulnerability within 24 hours, a full notification within 72. For an energy operator, that becomes a live stream of manufacturer notifications across smart meters, relays, RTUs and inverters — each one demanding a fast answer to "where does this run on our grid." Hybrid Core's new article looks at FusionX, FocusVision and Synth-Terra: fusing the
- Twenty-six EDF calls close on 29 September. Twenty-six consortia will each build something good. How many of those will talk to each other afterward? That's the question I can't stop asking while reading this year's Work Programme. The Fund rightly insists on European-controlled IP and multi-country consortia — but nothing in a single-topic grant obliges the quantum-networking project and the AI-situational-awareness project to share a data model once both are done. The article is about why I think the composing layer, not the
- On 29 September at 17:00 Brussels time, the European Defence Fund's 2026 Work Programme closes — roughly €1 billion across 26 open calls, from quantum-secured networks to AI-enabled situational awareness, each requiring a three-country consortium and European-controlled IP. Our new article argues that the harder problem isn't any single call. It's that 26 separately funded projects, built by 26 different consortia, have no built-in reason to speak the same data language once the grant ends. Hybrid Core's Smart Navigator was built
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