Overview
The Beacon offers coworking office spaces available for daily, monthly, or yearly terms, and provides event meeting rooms for business events. It facilitates connections between tech innovators through community programs and hosts regular events and webinars.
In the news
- Before we dive in the weekend, autonomous rail, drones and driverless vehicles, all running live in one afternoon at the second Autonomous Summit in Stad Antwerpen this week. What stood out to us: OTIV, ADLC, Helicus, Tective Robotics ( 2 winners of our pitch sessions together with Hubs4Growth & VLAIO - Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship) and Ghent University Racing did not present roadmaps, they ran demos. That gap between slide and system is the whole story of autonomy in ports right now. We hosted the Portuguese port
- A shoutout to next year’s edition … to come forward now already to ensure we can fit you in ! #PortTech The Beacon | Innovation Community
- We spent two days at Port of the Future Week in Antwerp this week with our PUMA Protector. It was great to show our quadruped to the port and terminal operators, investors, and regulators who attended, right there on the quay next to the electric terminal tractors and wind turbines it's actually built to work around. But the highlight was Spark! Pitch, where nine Flemish companies pitched their automation solutions. Unfortunately, we didn't come out on top, but big congrats to OTIV, who had a very strong case. Thanks to The Beacon
- 20.1 million into Antwerp startups in Q2 2026. €17.5 million of that went to one company. New Dealroom.co figures shared by Business in Stad Antwerpen put the city at €5.6 billion in enterprise value across 1,200+ startups and scaleups. The Series A went to D-CRBN, which uses plasma reactors to split captured CO2 back into carbon monoxide: feedstock for chemicals, polymers and e-fuels, and a direct answer to the emissions profile of the Antwerp cluster. Webclew and Maurice & Nora took the two seed rounds. The concentration tells
- Who owns a company decides what happens to it at the moments that matter most. That's the premise behind steward-ownership: control stays with the people closest to the mission, while founders and investors still see fair financial returns. Ecosia, Sharetribe and Signal are built on it. So is Exo-Membranes, here in Belgium. Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland are well ahead on this, and the model now appears as an optional element in EU.inc. Peter Depauw economist and initiator of Steward-owned, and Wim Floré, co-founder of
- A logistics vehicle driving Belgian public roads with no driver and no safety operator on board. According to the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, a European first. That was Zelostech at the second Autonomous Summit yesterday. The vehicle runs a fixed route through city, region and port for a full year. Last year the summit showed what autonomous tech could do. This year a remote controlled train, a remote controlled inland vessel and several autonomous trucks were doing it. This autumn the first commercial project starts: an autonomous truck
- Drone Horizon, condensed into a few minutes of footage. ADLC and Helicus took to the air with live demos. Tective Robotics walked away with the win from our pitch session and becomes a member for one year at The Beacon. Worth a rewatch if you were there, and worth a first watch if you weren't. Port of Antwerp-Bruges, Robin Pauwels, Stad Antwerpen #dronehorizon #maritimetech #portofantwerp #dronetech
- 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐞, 𝟏.𝟎𝟎𝟎+ 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬. 𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 ! 🚁 At the event, organised by the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, we welcomed a new drone type into our fleet. Through our partnership with HHLA Sky GmbH, the X25 now joins ADLC and will play a role in optimising our drone delivery network across the port. We also showed our operations in action. Visitors could see how the SGS Samplifly service is
Alumni 3 went on to found or lead
Jasna RokegemArtist in Residence→Founder & CEO at Jasna Rok Lab- PJorik RomboutsIdeator→CEO at Rombit
Wim De WaeleExecutive Chairman→Founding Partner at Miles Ahead
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