In 2024, the EIC Accelerator remained Europe’s flagship funding programme for breakthrough startups and SMEs, attracting record numbers of applications from across the continent. With 634 millions of euros in grants and equity at stake, the competition was fierce and the bar for success exceptionally high.
We have summarized the most important data gathered from the EIC Accelerator calls held in 2024.
Are you curious about the statistics? Keep reading below!
Overall Data in 2024
Although there were four calls in 2023, , only two calls were planned in 2024: the first call was held in March, while the second call was held in October. This was one of the main changes introduced in 2024 under the EIC Accelerator.
- In March 2024 the jury selected 68 companies to receive funding out of 969 proposals (7% success rate). For this call, the budget amounted to €411 million.
- In October 2024, 71 companies were elected as winners from 1211 submitted proposals (5.86% success rate). For this call, the budget amounted to €387 million.
Thus, in 2024, 139 companies out of 2180 applications received €798 million in funding under the EIC Accelerator (6.37% overall success rate).
Most Awarded Financing Type
In March 2024, blended finance was chosen by 96% of the winners (65 companies), the highest rate since the EIC Accelerator was launched. Only 2 companies out of 68 chose the ‘grant only’ type of finance (3%) and only one chose ‘equity only’ (1.47%). However, in October 2024, 79% of the approved projects requested blended finance (56 companies). 10 companies opted for grant only (14%) and 5 companies for equity-only funding (7%).
Most Awarded Countries
In March 2024, the awardees’ geographical focus spread across 17 countries, with Germany (13 projects, 19%), France (13 projects, 19%) and Israel (9 projects, 13%) as the most awarded countries. In October 2024, Germany was also the leading country with 15 awarded projects (21%), followed by the Netherlands (11 projects, 15%) and Spain and Sweden (7 projects each, 10%).
Most Awarded Areas
In March 2024, 44% of the awarded projects belonged to the New deep- tech area, 32% to Health and 24% to Environment (30 projects, 22 projects and 16 projects respectively).In October 2024, Health was the most awarded area (22 winners, 31%), followed by ICT (20 projects, 28%).
