EIC Accelerator winners and statistics June 2023: 47 European deeptech startups awarded 349€ million

A total of 47 European startups will receive up to €349 million through the third EIC 2023 call to bring game-changing innovations to the market. This cut-off demonstrated the strong success of IT and engineering-based businesses. They represent 25% of the chosen businesses, which is comparable to the health tech sector, which accounts for 30% of the total. Results of the call have already been published:

• 47 companies have been funded by the EIC in the June 2023 call (a decrease by 8% compared to the previous call) with a total budget of €349M (33% increase in budget).
• The selected companies spread across 15 countries, but the two main countries in this call have been France (25%), and Germany (11%).
• Blended Finance has been the most awarded financing type (68%).

From 648 full proposals submitted (an increase by 17%), 140 companies were interviewed by juries of experienced investors and entrepreneurs (21% of the companies reached the interview), where only 47 received funding (7.25% overall success rate). Only 11% of these winners have a female CEO (5 of the 47 companies).

Also, in the June 2023 cut-off, a few additional businesses joined the “Plug In” program. Under this program, candidates nominated by national innovation programs were allowed to submit a full proposal, bypassing the initial process of submitting and receiving approval for a short proposal.

Most of the awardees (68%) will receive blended finance option, which is a combination of grants and equity investments. The investments will be made through the EIC Fund.

Figure 1. Winners per type fo finance

The selected companies have a geographical spread spanning 15 countries, including four widening countries, being France (12 selected projects, 25%), Germany (5 projects, 10%), and Belgium and the Netherlands (4 projects each, 8%) the countries on the top of the chart:

Figure 2. Winners per country

The 47 awarded projects can be classified into three categories: New deep-tech technologies & ICT; Health & Medical care; and Environment. New deep-tech technologies and ICT has been the most awarded area with 19 out of 47 projects (41%), followed by Health (17 out of 47 projects, 36%), and, finally, environment (11 out of 47, 23%).

Figure 3. Share of winning projects by innovation area.

The table below includes the full list of winners, including among them Strata’s client Strolll, who receives the EIC support to further develop and commercialize its novel and patented augmented reality (AR) solution for cueing therapy in patients with neurological disorders. Congratulations!