The Commission has announced the second group of companies that have successfully passed the assessment phase of the Scale Up call of the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP). Together, they will receive up to a total of €90 million in equity investments, and will now move to the ERC Fund for investment decisions, with due diligence.
The ERC’s STEP Scale Up programme provides investments of €10-30 million (per company) aimed at mobilising private co-investment and achieving financing rounds of €50-150 million or more. This addresses the market gap for these financing rounds, which are critical to scaling up breakthrough innovations in Europe.
Of the nineteen companies that submitted their proposal for the first round, five were invited to meet with high-level independent experts, and four – which meet all the criteria – will be presented for investment decisions by the ERC Fund.
The selected companies cover a range of strategic technologies for Europe:
- Multiverse Computing (Spain) – quantum/IA
- Hyimpulse Technologies (Germany) – satellite launch services
- Dronamics (Bulgaria, Ireland) – cargo delivery drones
- Classiq technologies (Israel) – quantum software
All of them equally receive the STEP label, which aims to facilitate access to complementary or alternative funding, as well as to the European Innovation Council’s business acceleration services.
The European Innovation Council’s STEP Scale Up call is permanently open, with evaluation sessions taking place every quarter.
Background information
The European Innovation Council’s STEP Scale Up call has a budget of EUR 300 million for 2025 and a planned increase of EUR 900 million over the period 2025-2027. This initiative aims to provide increased investment in companies developing strategic technologies to enable them to bring them to market and reduce strategic dependencies. The European Innovation Council’s STEP Scale Up programme will help address the funding gap for deep technology scale-up in Europe, focusing on digital technologies, clean and resource efficient technologies, net zero emission technologies and biotechnologies.
It is one of several ongoing calls across multiple EU programmes to support strategic technologies.
More information: European Commission
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