Magics' EIC Accelerator Chips Built to Survive Space Radiation

Satellites, nuclear plants and fusion reactors all need electronics that keep working while radiation tears through them, and according to one Belgian company's EU project summary, Europe depends on foreign suppliers subject to export controls for those parts. That company, Magics Technologies, a chip designer in Geel, says it can build such chips on ordinary commercial CMOS processes, making them smaller and, per the same summary, up to ten times cheaper than existing solutions.

The European Innovation Council selected its project, HEROS (High-Reliability European Semiconductor Chips for Next-Gen Intelligent Systems), at the October 2025 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator for blended finance, a grant plus a proposed equity investment. CORDIS records a grant agreement signed on 28 May 2026 with an EU contribution of €2,499,999, running from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2028. The project is five months old, so this article sets out what it promised and what can already be checked.

A nuclear lab's answer to radiation damage

Magics grew out of radiation-tolerant electronics research for nuclear environments. When it was founded, SCK CEN announced in February 2016 that MAGICS Instruments had been formed in late October 2015 by Jens Verbeeck and Ying Cao as a spin-off of KU Leuven and the nuclear research centre, after seven years of research at both, and that its chips were designed to withstand more than 1 megagray of radiation. Verbeeck called the company "the missing link between the semi-conductor industry and the nuclear industry". Silicon Canals also describes Magics as a fabless 2015 spin-off of KU Leuven and SCK CEN.

The method is called radiation hardening by design. Rather than fabricating on dedicated radiation-hardened process lines, the circuits are laid out on standard commercial processes so that they tolerate the cumulative dose and the single particle strikes that flip bits in normal chips. The company's own website claims tolerance up to 100 Mrad (1 MGy) of total ionising dose for its hardest products and immunity to single-event effects above 62.5 MeV·cm²/mg. These are the company's figures; no independent test report for the full range could be found.

Its product lines, named in its April 2025 funding release, are a Vision Series of imaging chips for nuclear cameras and inspection, a Time Series of timing and clock chips for space missions, and a Motion Series of sensing and control chips for robotics, actuators and small modular reactors.

The space part: one qualified chip, per the company

The clearest public evidence of the technology is the MAG-TDC00002, a time-to-digital converter that measures the interval between two signals, for applications the company lists as approach, landing and docking, and spectroscopy. At the European Space Agency's AMICSA workshop in June 2025, Magics engineers presented results from an ESA-supported development: 8 picoseconds single-shot precision over a range from zero to 3 seconds, 20 milliwatts of power, total dose tolerance above 100 krad (Si) and single-event tolerance above 62.5 MeV·cm²/mg. The same slides describe a 16-channel follow-up chip, also with ESA support.

The company then announced that the chip was qualified under the ESCC9000 space standard in December 2025, and in May 2026 that a MAG-TDC was operating in orbit on the International Space Station in a space weather monitoring system. The announcement names neither the mission nor the customer, and neither claim could be confirmed in a second, independent source. In April 2026 it launched a radiation-tolerant clock generator, the MAG-PLL00002.

What HEROS promises

According to the CORDIS objective, Magics' products are at technology readiness level 6 and HEROS is meant to take them to level 8. The target is sensing, timing and actuation systems-on-chip for satellites in low Earth and geostationary orbit. The objective stresses that the chips are free of the US ITAR and EAR export regimes, and positions them as a contribution to European strategic autonomy under the EU Chips Act.

The EIC announced on 17 February 2026 that 61 companies had been selected in that round, with €467 million requested in total and 85% on blended finance, and its list of selected companies shows MAGICS TECHNOLOGIES, HEROS, Belgium, blended finance. Magics announced its selection the same day without giving an amount. CORDIS records the grant only; no EIC Fund equity investment in Magics has been announced, and its size is not public.

1. Rad-hard chips at TRL 6Products on saleConverter, clock generator and image sensor chips listed with evaluation kits on the company site.
2. Space qualification and flight heritageClaimed for one chipESCC9000 qualification and ISS operation announced by the company, not independently confirmed.
3. Systems-on-chip at TRL 8Too earlyProject runs to May 2028; CORDIS shows no report yet.
4. Revenue above €30M by 2030ProjectionNo turnover is published in the filed accounts.

The money and the accounts

Magics raised €9.7 million in two closings in 2025. The first, of €5.7 million in April, came from the Flanders Future Tech Fund managed by the Flemish investment company PMV, Invest for Jobs, KU Leuven Research & Development, the Gemma Frisius Fund and the founders. The second, of €4 million in October, was led by SC One (Family Schaubroeck & Cipal) and PMV, as also reported by Silicon Canals. The company said the money would scale production and fund expansion into North America and Asia; in August 2026 it opened an office in Osceola County, Florida.

The Belgian Crossroads Bank for Enterprises records the company as active and in a normal legal situation, with seven directors, among them Renier Schaubroeck since 29 September 2025, the month before the SC One-led closing. The filed accounts, as reproduced by Companyweb and Staatsbladmonitor, give identical equity, debt and gross margin figures. They differ on the 2025 balance sheet total: €14.83 million per Companyweb, €14.75 million per Staatsbladmonitor.

The capital went in against widening losses. Companyweb shows a net loss of €1.65 million for 2024 and €3.02 million for 2025; Staatsbladmonitor shows an operating loss of €1.99 million and €3.69 million for the same years. Magics files no turnover, and its gross margin, the closest public measure of trading, has been almost flat since 2023 at about €3 million. Staatsbladmonitor shows one year with an operating profit, 2020, at €0.86 million.

Why the EU funds it

The European Chips Act of September 2023 sets up a framework of measures to strengthen Europe's semiconductor ecosystem. The HEROS objective places Magics inside it: it says Europe depends on foreign suppliers subject to export controls for radiation-hardened parts, and offers chips designed in Belgium, free of ITAR and EAR, for European satellites and, on the company's own news page, for nuclear inspection and fusion robotics. That is the policy argument for the grant. The company's news page, checked in October 2026, announces no volume order from a European satellite builder.

Magics Technologies was not asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.