First Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator 2021 results: EIC funds 65 deep-tech companies with more than €363 million

Read about the statistics, success rates and the list of awarded projects

The results of the first EIC Accelerator cut-off date, which closed in June have been recently published. This is the first fully-fledged EIC Accelerator call beloging to the new Horizon Europe programme and therefore the results and statistics are of utmost interest to drawing conclusions about the best strategies to follow in subsequent calls.

Although the information published by the EIC is scattered and limited, we have tried to gather as much data as possible. The statistics of the results of the first call materialise the so-many changes made on the application and evaluation processes in 2021. Data speak louder than words!

First, let’s look at the core metrics delivered by the EIC:

• 65 companies will receive funding
• 92% (60) out of the winning companies will receive investment
• €363 million will be allocated to these companies
• €227 million will be allocated in the form of investment component
• Winners represent a total of 16 countries, being the top countries France (18%), Germany (17%) and Netherlands (12%)
• 20% successful proposals from female CEOs.

On top of that, 24 Swiss companies also obtained a GO at Step 2 but were deemed ineligible given the unfruitful negotiations between the Swiss Government and the EU. These projects will be funded directly by the Swiss government but the grant agreements are still under preparation. We at Strata have some good news from our Swiss clients that we hope we’ll be able to publish soon!

Overview

The following charts illustrate the results:

Other key metrics

The following table includes additional key metrics that are extremely important to future applicants:

Disclaimer: A number of assumptions have been made where data was not available:

• The Step 1 success rate was extrapolated based on a partial data published through LinkedIn by EIC representatives.
• The Topic success rates were calculated assuming the budget distribution has been maintained and distributed homogenously among the applicants (45.52% of awarded companies through the Challenge Driven calls)

Conclusions

Some interesting and surprising conclusions:

• The average grant is increasing
• The Step 2 success rate is surprisingly high (19% of GOs among all submitted proposals)
• The Step 2 abandon rate is also very high (41% of the Step 1 GOs didn’t submit a Step 2 proposal). Undoubtedly, the very short timeframe available in June since the release of the EIC application platform and the extraordinarily long and cumbersome Step 2 application form have achieved their goal in limiting the number of submitted proposals.
• The success rate for blended finance applications more than doubles the one for grant-only applications. It is however difficult to understand if this is due to the lower readiness level of grant-only projects, the lower quality of grant-only proposals or a biased evaluation process that favours blended-finance over grant-only operations.
• Contrary to popular thinking, the success rate seems to be higher for the Open call than for the Challenge driven calls. This might be due to the fact that the Challenges were actually quite broad and attracted a higher number of applications.

Annex: Full list

The full list of funded companies is included below.

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