With €634 million in 2025, the EIC Accelerator will continue as the main European funding instrument for disruptive science-based startups and SMEs. EIC grants will continue at €0.5 to €2.5 million, while investments will range from €0.5 to €10 million in 2025.
Novelties for 2025
The EIC Accelerator 2025 presents some novelties and changes:
- The maximum investment component is now €10 million (instead of €15 million as in the previous calls). Investments above €10 million are available under the STEP call.
- Applications must have completed all elements of Technology Readiness Level 5.
- The evaluation of short proposals (Step 1) will be batched on a monthly basis with results within 4-6 weeks.
- For proposals submitted through the Open and Challenges Calls, unanimous approval in case of consensus meetings is required for a jury interview invitation.
- Nuclear applications are eligible in the case of the EIC Accelerator.
- Equity-only is now open to new applicants.
- The EIC Accelerator has announced new challenges: acceleration of advanced materials development and upscaling along the value chain, biotechnology driven low emission food and feed production systems, GenAIEU: creating European champions in generative AI, innovative in-space servicing, operations, robotics and technologies for resilient EU space infrastructure, and breakthrough innovations for future mobility.
There are other interesting updates in the EIC Work Programme 2025, outside the scope of the EIC Accelerator:
- The WIDERA programme (Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area) will introduce a pilot EIC Pre-Accelerator call to support early-stage deep tech startups in the so-called widening countries. The objective will be to develop the technology, business and investment readiness to levels that would enable them to successfully apply and attract funding from EIC Accelerator or other sources.
- The EIC budget will experience an increase in 2025 as €300 million will be deployed in the EIC STEP scaleup call, a new initiative for single startups and SMEs, small mid-caps, or investors working at the scale-up phase.
Overview of the end of 2023 and 2024
The following data has been extracted from an analysis of the two latest EIC Accelerator calls available in 2023 and 2024: the November 2023 and the March 2024 calls (results from the October 2024 call have not been published yet).
Funded companies
There was a strong increase in the success rate during the first EIC Accelerator call in 2024. In November 2023, 42 companies were funded out of 1,083 (3.8% success rate), while in March 2024 the jury selected 68 to receive funding out of 969 proposals (7% success rate).
Most awarded financing type
Blended finance has been the most awarded financing type (62%, and 96%, respectively). Grant first was no longer available in 2024.
Top 3 countries
In November 2023, the most awarded countries were Germany (16%), France (14%), and Spain and Sweden (11% each). In March 2024, Germany (19%), France (19%) and Israel (13%) were the main countries.
Top areas
In the November 2023 call, 21 out of 42 projects (48%) belonged to the Deeptech and ICT area, followed by Health (12 out of 42 projects, 29%), and, finally, environment (8 out of 42, 19%). In the March 2024 call, 44% of the awarded projects belong to the New deep- tech area, 32% to Health and 24% to Environment.
So overall, deeptech was the most awarded area (46%), followed by health (32%) and environment (20%).
Background
The EIC Accelerator is a funding programme under Horizon Europe that offers support to start-ups and SMEs that:
- have a innovative, game changing product, service or business model that could create new markets or disrupt existing ones in Europe and even worldwide,
- have the ambition and commitment to scale up,
- are looking for substantial funding, but the risks involved are too high for private investors alone to invest
The European Innovation Council (EIC) has been established under the EU Horizon Europe programme. It has a budget of €10.1 billion to support game changing innovations throughout the lifecycle from early stage research, to proof of concept, technology transfer, and the financing and scale up of start-ups and SMEs.
