European Innovation Council to invest €1.4 billion in deep tech and scale up of strategic technologies in 2025

The European Innovation Council (EIC), part of the EU research and innovation programme Horizon Europe, will support European deep tech research and high-potential start-ups with €1.4 billion next year. The EIC Work Programme 2025, which the Commission adopted today, represents an increase of nearly €200 million in comparison with 2024.

In addition to a bigger budget, the 2025 work programme brings several improvements, including better access to scale-up equity funding with the EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) scale-up scheme, introduced following the STEP regulation adopted earlier this year. Other improvements based on the recommendations of the EIC Board are also included.

The main highlights are:

• New EIC STEP Scale-up scheme, which will work with a budget of €300 million in 2025 (and expected to grow to €900 million over the period 2025-27) to provide larger investments in companies aiming to bring strategic technologies to the EU market and avoid strategic dependencies. It will provide investments of between €10 and €30 million through the EIC Fund per company to leverage private co-investment, achieving at least €50 to €150 million in total. The EIC STEP Scale-up scheme will help address a market gap in deep tech scale-up funding in Europe, targeting digital technologies, clean and resource-efficient technologies including net-zero, and biotechnologies.
• Updated set of ‘EIC Challenges’:
  • €120 million for emerging technologies including autonomous robots, climate resilient crops, converting waste to input materials and medical diagnosis.
  • €250 million for earlier stage companies in specific target technologies including generative artificial intelligence, new space, agri tech and future mobility solutions.
• Increasing access to Business Acceleration Services for emerging companies from ‘widening countries’ (countries with lower levels of research and innovation performance).
• Awarding of Seals of Excellence under the Transition and Accelerator calls and the new STEP Seal under the STEP Scale-up scheme and Accelerator Challenge calls: these Seals aim to facilitate access to complementary and alternative funding sources such as Cohesion Policy Funds as well as to EIC Business Acceleration Services.

Four schemes

The EIC Work Programme 2025 is built around three main funding schemes:

• EIC Pathfinder – €262 million for multi-disciplinary research teams to undertake visionary early-stage technology research and development with the potential to lead to technology breakthroughs (grants up to €4 million).
• EIC Transition – €98 million to turn research results into innovation opportunities, following up on results generated by EIC Pathfinder, European Research Council Proof of Concept and Horizon Europe Pillar 2 (societal challenges) collaborative projects (grants up to €2.5 million).
• EIC Accelerator – €634 million for start-ups and SMEs to develop, commercialise and scale up innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones (grants below €2.5 million, investments from €500 000 to €10 million).

In addition, the EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale-up scheme – €300 million – will provide additional equity funding to promising companies driving innovation in critical areas (SMEs, start-ups, spin-offs and small mid-caps) to help them secure larger private co-investment for further scaling their businesses (investments from €10 to €30 million).

Direct financial support to innovators is complemented with access to a wide range of business acceleration services and support actions offering leading expertise and linking with corporates, investors and ecosystem actors.

Background

The European Innovation Council was launched in March 2021 as a major novelty under the Horizon Europe programme, building on a pilot phase from 2018-2020. It has a budget of over €10 billion between in 2021-2027. So far, under Horizon Europe, the EIC has supported more than 630 companies and more than 450 research projects.

The EIC’s investment arm, the EIC Fund, has reached €1 billion in actual investments in deep tech start-ups, leveraging over four times as much in co-investments. This makes the EIC Fund the largest and the most active deep tech co-investment fund in Europe. To further boost access of breakthrough EIC companies to venture capital, the Commission has recently launched the EIC Trusted Investors Network.

The Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) regulation entered into force in March 2024 and revises the Horizon Europe legislation to introduce new flexibilities for investment support and enabling larger investments under the EIC for companies in strategic areas. The EIC is one of a number of EU programmes that implements STEP.

All potential applicants can join the EIC information days that will take place on 5th (general one) and 6th (EIC Accelerator Challenges) of November 2024.

More information: European Commission