The European Union will spend 1.4 billion euros (about $1.5 billion) next year to boost deep tech research and help scale up strategic areas such as AI, low-carbon technologies, agritech and biotech, the European Commission says. announced on Tuesday.
The budget for the European Innovation Council's (EIC) 2025 work program, which is part of the European Innovation Council's flagship research program, the Horizon Europe research programme, has increased by nearly €200 million compared to last year.
The European Commission highlighted several other “improvements” to the 2024 program, including improved access to scale-up equity funding through the EIC European Strategic Technology Platform (STEP) scheme.
The revised EIC work program for 2025 is aimed at boosting investment in technologies essential to driving digitalisation, strengthening regional autonomy and supporting the bloc's net-zero transition. This follows the adoption of regulations.
The new EIC STEP scale-up plan has a budget of €300 million in 2025 (which the European Commission expects to increase to €900 million by 2027). The funding will be used to secure larger investments in companies that bring strategic technologies to the EU and help avoid dependencies by enabling private sector co-investment.
Under this scheme, the EU Fund will provide investments of between €10 million and €30 million per company to elicit private co-investments, achieving a total investment of at least €50 million to €150 million per investment, the European Commission said. the meeting said.
“The EIC STEP scale-up call will help address the market gap in deep technology scale-up financing in Europe, targeting digital technologies, clean and resource-efficient technologies including net zero, and biotech.” said in a press release.
Autonomous robots, artificial intelligence and agritech support
The work program also includes an updated set of EIC challenges aimed at fostering innovation in priority areas. Around 120 million euros will be spent on “emerging technologies” such as autonomous robots, as well as climate-resilient crops, converting waste into inputs and medical diagnostics.
There is also a budget of €250 million for early-stage companies in specific targeted technologies, including generative AI, new space, agritech and future mobility solutions.
Elsewhere, the commission said the 2025 work program would increase access to business acceleration services for start-ups in countries with poor research and innovation performance. We also help find alternative funding sources by awarding Seals of Excellence to projects that miss out on EIC funding.
According to the Commission, the EIC Work Program 2025 is built around three main funding schemes.
The first is a research-focused track called EIC Pathfinder, which will award two to “multidisciplinary research teams working on visionary early-stage technology research and development that can lead to technological breakthroughs.” It has a budget of 62 million euros. This track offers grants of up to €4 million to successful candidates.
The second is a commercialization-focused track called EIC Transition, with a budget of €98 million aimed at turning research results into “innovation opportunities”. These grants amount to up to 2.5 million euros.
Thirdly, there is a start-up and SME track called EIC Accelerator, which has the largest budget of 634 million euros. It will be deployed to support start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises to “develop, commercialize and scale up innovations that have the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones.” These grants are less than €2.5 million, with investments ranging from €500,000 to €10 million.
The EIC STEP Scale-Up scheme builds on these trajectories, providing additional funding to promising companies in sectors of EU priority.
“Direct financial support to innovators will be complemented by access to a wide range of business acceleration services and activities that provide cutting-edge expertise and support collaboration with businesses, investors and ecosystem stakeholders.” added the European Commission.