René Raaijmakers

Founder of Bits&Chips and High Tech Institute | Tech Writer | Author of ASML’s Architects

René Raaijmakers is a Dutch tech journalist, entrepreneur, author, and publisher specializing in semiconductors, lithography, and high-tech systems. He is the founder of Bits&Chips (1999) and High Tech Institute (2011). He is also the author of ASML’s Architects, a detailed history of ASML’s early development from the 1960s onwards. He is currently working on a sequel covering the company’s more recent history from 1996 to 2023.

Born in Oirschot in 1960, he studied solid-state chemistry at the Radboud University Nijmegen before moving to journalism in 1989. More than three decades later, his scientific background remains central to his work, enabling him to report on semiconductor technology, lithography, and systems engineering with a level of technical depth rarely found in today’s media landscape. However, his main interest is not the technology itself, but the people behind it and its societal implications.

In the 1990s, he built his reputation as a freelance journalist for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad and trade magazines Intermediair, Automatisering Gids, and Computable, covering the semiconductor and ICT sectors as they reshaped the global economy. In 1999, he founded Techwatch and launched Bits&Chips — now the leading trade publication for the Benelux high-tech industry.

In 2011, he co-founded High Tech Institute, a training organization that brought to market technical courses previously developed by Philips Research and the Philips Centre for Fabrication Technology (CFT), and originally offered by the Philips Centre for Technical Training (CTT). Raaijmakers played an instrumental role in bringing together organizations such as Mechatronics Academy, Tech2Prof, and Sioux, among others, that had taken over these training activities from Philips, thereby preserving this knowledge for the Brainport region.

High Tech Institute focuses on post-bachelor and academic education for technology professionals and engineers working in high-tech systems, mechatronics, optics, and software.

Raaijmakers is known for his analytical reporting. His columns often challenge industry assumptions, particularly around semiconductor strategy and technological competition.

His book ASML’s Architects took seven years to research, involved more than 300 hours of interviews, and drew on conversations with more than one hundred people inside and outside the company. Reviewers such as Dan Hutcheson (senior fellow at TechInsights), Peter Clarke, and Mike Maynard described it as “a thrilling tale of against-all-odds entrepreneurialism” and “a story that would be unbelievable if it were not true.”

Books:

Raaijmakers is the author of several books including:

De architecten van ASML (2017, Dutch edition)

ASML’s Architects (2018, English edition)

Battle of lithography machines (2020, Chinese edition)

De geldmachine (management edition, 2017)

Natlab — Kraamkamer van ASML, NXP en de cd (with Paul van Gerven, 2016).

Before ASML, there was Philips. In “Natlab — Kraamkamer van ASML, NXP en de cd” (co-authored with Paul van Gerven, 2016), Raaijmakers opened up a research world that had been closed for decades. The Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium — founded in 1914 — was the birthplace of the wafer stepper that became ASML’s foundation, the chip technology that became NXP, and the compact disc, Philips’ most commercially successful product. The book doesn’t romanticize the lab: it busts myths, including the widely celebrated idea of total academic freedom at Natlab, and gives equal weight to the debacles alongside the breakthroughs. Reviewers praised it as the most accurate and colorful account ever written of how one of Europe’s great industrial research institutions actually worked — and how its inventions shaped the world.

As managing director of High Tech Institute, René Raaijmakers regularly interviews trainers about technology trends and their motivation to pass on knowledge to future generations. These trainers are experienced practitioners: senior engineers, university professors, and technical specialists active in the high-tech industry. His ability to move between the engineer’s mindset and the journalist’s instinct for what truly matters makes these conversations unusually revealing and essential reading for course participants.

René Raaijmakers is director of Techwatch, editor/publisher of Bits&Chips and owner/managing director of High Tech Institute.