The European Commission opens the doors to funding opportunities worth over €1.7 billion with the late adoption of the European Innovation Council’s 2022 work programme.
The European Commission has adopted the 2022 work programme of the European Innovation Council (EIC), opening the doors to funding opportunities worth over €1.7 billion over the course of the year. This programme is primarily aimed at innovators operating in the scaling up and/or creation of new markets, with the Commission specifically citing quantum computing, new generation batteries, and gene therapy as examples.
The funding will be split between the three different instruments of the EIC: EIC Pathfinder will receive €350 million and be earmarked for research teams to pursue future and emerging technologies, through EIC Transition €131 million is designated to help convert early stage research results into fledgling companies, while the EIC Accelerator gets the largest portion amounting to €1.16 billion to accelerate the scaling-up phase for start-ups and SMEs. The remaining funding will go to other prizes and support services.
All projects under the EIC’s purview have access to its Business Acceleration Services, which provide “coaches, mentors and expertise, partnering opportunities with corporates, investors and others, and a range of other services and events.” This year’s work programme will see new initiatives, first among them increased efforts to support women founders. An innovation gender and diversity index will help the EIC identify gaps and encourage diversity within companies, and provide sound and consistent information to investors, customers, and policymakers. The EU Prize for Women Innovators will see the addition of two new prizes for innovators under 35, increasing the number of prizes awarded from four to six. Three prizes will be awarded to the most inspiring women innovators across the EU and the countries associated with Horizon Europe, and three prizes to the most promising ‘Rising Innovators’ under the age of 35.
Further novelties include a new EIC Scale-Up 100 initiative. Having already supported over 2’600 small and medium business (SMEs) and start-ups in the past since 2018, the EIC Scale-up 100 initiative will identify 100 promising deep tech EU companies that have the potential to become ‘unicorns’ (with valuation of over €1 billion) and offer them bespoke support in the pursuit of that goal. The beneficiaries will be selected from the portfolio of EIC supported start-ups as well as from similar programmes at EU level (such as the Digital Europe Programme and the EIT) and at Member State and Associated Country level. Taking into account the diversity of national programmes, this action is also open to companies not being supported by national programmes as long as they meet the requirements for scaling up. Additionally, the EIC Accelerator will now be able to make individual equity investments above €15 million, to support companies with highly ambitious and high-potential scale-up plans. Furthermore, application processes will be made more flexible for EIC Transition and Accelerator, with a continuous application process introduced for EIC Transition, and second time applicants to EIC Accelerator will be able to describe and defend the improvements made to their resubmission, as already done with EIC Pathfinder. Two cut-offs for proposals are foreseen for the Pathfinder and Transition, and three cut-offs for the Accelerator.
The European Innovation Council has already supported 4 unicorns and more than 90 centaurs. This year will see the EIC’s largest funding for entrepreneurs and researchers, with the ambition of making the EIC Europe’s unicorn factory.