The European Commission adopted the 2024 work programme of the European Innovation Council. It opens funding opportunities worth over €1.2 billion for strategic technologies and scaling up companies. The total budget earmarked for the EIC Accelerator in 2024 is €675 million, with €375 million designated for Open Call proposals and €300 million allocated across six Challenge categories.
The EIC Accelerator programme helps high-risk, innovative SMEs and start-ups willing to develop and commercialise new products, business models, and services. These developments could potentially drive economic growth and influence new markets or disrupt existing European or global markets.
The EIC Accelerator supports companies (principally SMEs, including start-ups) to scale up high impact innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones.
The total budget for the EIC Accelerator in 2024 is €675 million, with €375 million allocated for the Open Call, €300 million for the six Challenge calls. The budget is further split for the grant component (40% of the allocated budget) and equity component (60% of the allocated budget):
The grant first is no longer part of the funding types. The three available funding types in 2024 are: Grant only, Blended finance & Equity only.
The funding rate for the grant component remains at 70%. The grant component is up to €2.5 million, while the investment component goes from 0.5 million to €15 million.
The submission of the short application remains open at any time.
The cut-off dates for full applications in 2024 are:
"EIC Accelerator Open has no predefined thematic priorities and is open to proposals in any field of technology or application. If an application falls within the scope of the Challenges topics below, grant funding is subject to eligibility in accordance with the specific conditions applicable to those topics:
Furthermore, in case of an investment support for applications in the areas of AI, quantum, semiconductors and biotechnology, specific safeguards may be introduced in the investment agreement (see Introduction, section on Economic Security).
The EIC Accelerator supports the later stages of technology development as well as scale up. The technology component of your innovation must therefore have been tested and validated in a laboratory or other relevant environment (e.g.,at least Technology Readiness Level 5 or higher). The EIC Accelerator looks to support companies where the EIC support will act as a catalyst to crowd in other investors necessary for the scale up of the innovation.
The EIC Accelerator focuses on innovations building on scientific discovery or technological breakthroughs (‘deep tech’) and where significant funding is needed over a long timeframe before returns can be generated (‘patient capital’). Such innovations often struggle to attract financing because the risks and time period involved are too high. Funding and support from the EIC Accelerator is designed to enable such innovators to attract the full investment amounts needed for scale up in a shorter timeframe."
Specific objectives:
"This Challenge aims to support the development of:
Examples of areas in which there could be relevant technological improvements include:
The targeted applicants are primarily SMEs developing models themselves, but could also include SMEs providing innovative infrastructure, development tools, and critical support to the developers of generative AI solutions, in helping the efficient use of existing models while addressing specific issues such as hallucination or limited models' knowledge.
The applicant must demonstrate a genuine commitment to developing and deploying “European-Value driven” AI. This European perspective should become a differentiating factor that will bring a competitive advantage to these companies, and an important element to de-risk future investments."
Expected outcomes and impacts:
"This Challenge is expected to reinforce the development of foundation models, which are “European-Value driven”, in line with the trustworthy and ethical principles as well as the (draft) AI Act.
The AI models developed and deployed under this Challenge are expected to comply with the EU concept for Trustworthy AI and the relevant ethical principles as well as the (draft) AI Act. In that respect, besides performance, due attention should be paid to data quality, transparency, privacy, and security.
In the mid and long term, it is expected to reduce dependencies and support European companies in leveraging the advances in generative AI to enhance their products and develop new ones.
The selected beneficiaries will receive favorable access to European supercomputing resources for the training of their large foundation models in line with the access terms and conditions of the EuroHPC regulation. In addition, they may benefit from additional actions aimed at creating strategic partnerships with major industries or attracting further capital. In addition, opportunities may be explored to provide the selected beneficiaries with access to scientific datasets through the European Open Science Cloud or to provide users of the European Open Science Cloud with access to the tools developed by the beneficiaries."
2. Enabling virtual worlds and augmented interaction in high-impact applications to support the realisation of Industry 5.0
Specific objectives:
"The specific objective of the Challenge is to support the development and deployment of advanced virtual worlds technology solutions for industry which are human centric, sustainable, and resilient in their design and/or user contexts. The introduction to the market of innovations in the following areas and their scale up in exploiting new market opportunities is encouraged:
Expected outcomes and impacts:
"Proposals are expected to aim at a sufficient integration of high-risk innovations with state-of-the-art building blocks (proprietary or not) towards compelling in-situ demonstration of clear added-value from using virtual worlds in high-impact markets, supporting the realisation of industry 5.0, with clear up-take in the market and scale up exploitation.
Expected outcomes of the innovations include:
Interoperability between solutions is a key point for the free movement of users and tools between virtual worlds and avoids the phenomenon of gate keepers."
3. Enabling the smart edge and quantum technology components
"This Challenge contributes to the objectives of the Chips Act by supporting the development of critical technologies where start-ups and SMEs with disruptive innovations have the potential to scale up and help ensure the future open strategic autonomy of the Union."
A. Enabling the smart edge
Specific objectives
"The objective of this Challenge is to promote the development of novel semiconductor components and integrated smart systems for next-generation edge devices with significant impact. The proposals should focus on development of smart integrated devices where the competitive advantage may lie in the system approach or in one of the key components or technologies, such as the following:
Expected outcomes and impacts
"This Challenge should lead to deep-tech innovations for next-generation edge and IoT semiconductor ships devices that will have important impact for the smart edge, including:
B. Emerging quantum technology components
Specific objectives
"The objective of this Challenge is to support ground-breaking innovations that have a high potential to develop:
Expected outcomes and impacts
"This Challenge is expected to support the EU in taking a leading role in the development of cutting-edge quantum computing/simulation and quantum sensing and quantum communications that can be used in real environment and deployed in various areas.
In mid and long term, this Challenge is expected to expand the quantum capabilities of Europe, underpin its economic resilience and digital sovereignty. It should pave the way for Europe to be at the cutting-edge of quantum capabilities by 2030 as envisioned by the 2030 Digital Compass: the European way for the Digital Decade Policy Programme."
4. Food from precision fermentation and algae
Specific objectives:
"In support of the EU Soil Mission, the EU Green Deal, Farm to Fork strategy, Fit for 55 and REPowerEU policy actions, the key goal of this Challenge is to support the production of sustainable and nutritious food from precision fermentation and algae.
Innovations must go beyond incremental changes to the state of the art and deliver novel production processes that must deliver energy and resource efficient, low emission foods that are integral to a healthy diet. The approaches taken must be scalable based on a range of process parameters such as, but not limited to light, temperature, and pressure to allow custom modification of the final product to a range of operating environments including those with high, or even extreme, resource constraints without compromising the potential gains from a shift to food from precision fermentation and algae. Further, innovations must also ensure a closed circle production process to prevent the release of micro-organisms or other contaminants through waste streams. All projects must therefore provide a lifecycle assessment taking into account environmental, social and economic considerations.
The specific objectives of this Challenge are the development and scaling up of interdisciplinary solutions in the areas of:
Proposals are expected to consider regulatory aspects alongside issues surrounding consumer acceptance and articulate suitable strategies to support market entry within and beyond the EU."
Expected outcomes and impacts:
"This Challenge aims to improve the sustainability, efficiency, and resilience of the European food supply chain through decoupling food production from the soil and minimising environmental impacts including water pollution. It looks to support radical technological innovation with possible disruptive effects on existing markets to secure additional food sources while preserving the environment and supporting biodiversity at the same time.
Viable alternatives are critical to address challenges linked to climate change and the environment including biodiversity loss and pollution. In doing so, this Challenge will foster EU technological autonomy and leadership in delivering scalable food production processes that can generate benefits to consumers in Europe and beyond.
Further, the development of novel foods and processes may also help provide consumers with healthier alternatives thereby decreasing the incidence of food related health conditions amongst the general population."
5. Monoclonal antibody-based therapeutics for new variants of emerging viruses
Specific objectives:
"In the era of pandemic preparedness and precision medicine, the overall goal of this EIC Challenge is to support the development of strategic approaches leading to broad spectrum mAbs-based therapeutics against new variants of emerging pathogens of high concern. Applicants to the Challenge can address:
Expected outcomes and impacts:
"This Challenge aims to enhance the EU’s response to future pandemics. It will provide solutions that can complement efforts to deliver rapid detection and analysis of virus variants, in coordination with relevant international systems and networks (such as the HERA incubator) and will ensure that the development of new antiviral treatments target the variants of highest concern. It will also help develop a platform of approaches that can ensure efficacy of future treatment in the event that new variants of high concern exhibit decreased susceptibility to current mAbs."
6. Renewable energy sources and their whole value chain including materials development and recycling of components
Specific objectives:
"This challenge aims at scaling-up different RES and their supply chain to limit the EU’s significant dependency on imports of components including CRM to ultimately increase the EU’s energy strategic autonomy in the energy sector. This challenge contributes to the objectives of both Net-zero industry and Critical raw materials acts and to the EU’s open strategic autonomy.
This challenge focuses on RES and its proposals can target one or more of the following objectives:
The abovementioned technologies (including materials) have to be developed without using CRM or ensuring the maximization of their recycle/reuse so ensuring a circular economy approach. As well they need to minimize the environmental footprint measured through a life-cycle analysis (including cost and social impact evaluation)."
Expected outcomes and impacts:
The EIC has a set new participation targets for widening countries.
The EIC Board has set an ambitious target: to bolster the participation of widening countries in EIC instruments to a commendable 15%, a marked rise from the existing figure of 8%. This move stems from a conviction that, beyond the borders of the traditional powerhouses, lies a reservoir of untapped potential brimming in the widening countries.
To read more on the EIC's statement on the CEE region: Click here
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