EIC Accelerator winners and statistics March 2023: €261 million for European deep-techs

The EIC Accelerator is a funding programme under Horizon Europe that offers support to start-ups and SMEs in the form of grants and investments to bring game-changing innovations to the market. 

The second EIC 2023 call closed on March 22, 2023, when a new set of companies were awarded by the European Innovation Council to receive funding. Results have been recently published:

• 51 companies have been funded by the EIC in the March 2023 call (an increase by 59% compared to the previous call) with a total budget of €261M (33% increase in budget),
• The selected companies spread across 17 countries, but the top three countries in this call have been the Netherlands (14%), France (12%), Israel and UK (9% each).
• Blended Finance has been the most awarded financing type (45%).

551 proposals were submitted for this call (an increase by 15%), and 139 reached the interview stage (25% success rate). Although this call has not been as competitive as the January call, the selected companies have gone through a challenging and competitive process where only 51 of them (32% success rate at Step 3) have been awarded (19 more companies compared to the previous one, that is, an increase by 12% in success rates).

Almost 30% percent of the winners (15 of the 51 companies) have a female CEO, CTO (Chief Technology Officer) or CSO (Chief Scientific Officer).

More companies have been funded through this call which also represents an increase in budget: this time, the total awarded funding amounts to €261 million in a combination of grants and equity investments, which will be paid through the EIC Fund.

The geographical focus of the winners spreads across 17 countries,  including three widening countries, being Netherlands (14%), France (12%), Israel and UK (9% each) the countries on the top of the chart:

Figure 1. Number of EIC winners per country

Most awarded projects belong to blended finance (23 out of 51 proposals, 45%), followed by grant first (22 out of 51 applications, 43%) and, finally, grant only (6 out of 51 proposals, 12%).

Figure 2. Share of winning projects by financing type

The 51 awarded projects can be classified into three categories: New deep-tech technologies & ICT; Health & Medical care; and Environment. Health has been the most awarded area with 27 out of 51 projects (52.94%), followed by new deep-tech technologies and ICT (17 out of 51 projects, 33.33%), and, finally, environment (7 out of 51, 13.72%).

Figure 3. Share of winning projects by innovation area.

The table below includes the full list of winners, including our friends from ENERPOLY, the Swedish startup disrupting the battery market through its unique and environmentally friendly zinc-ion battery cells and packs for stationary storage. Congratulations to all winners!