EU boosts EIC budget for supporting deeptech R&D and strategic scale-ups

The European Union will spend €1.4 billion (about $1.5 billion) next year to bolster deeptech research and support scale-ups in strategic areas like AI, low-carbon technologies, agritech and biotech, the European Commission said on Tuesday.

The budget for the 2025 Work Program of the European Innovation Council (EIC), part of the bloc’s flagship Horizon Europe research program, has been increased by nearly €200 million compared to last year.

The Commission highlighted several other “improvements” on the 2024 program, including better access to scale-up equity funding via the EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) scheme.

The revisions to the EIC work program for 2025 follow the bloc adopting the STEP regulation in February with the aim of strengthening investment in technologies critical to driving digitalization, boosting regional autonomy and supporting the bloc’s Net Zero transition.

The new EIC STEP Scale-Up scheme will have a budget of €300 million in 2025 (the Commission expects it to grow to €900 million by 2027). The funding will be deployed to secure larger investments in companies that bring strategic technologies to EU and help avoid dependencies by unlocking private sector co-investment.

Under the scheme, the EU fund will provide investments of between €10 million and €30 million per company to draw out private co-investment — achieving at least €50M to €150M in total per investment, the Commission said.

“The EIC STEP Scale-up call will help address a market gap in deep tech scale-up funding in Europe, targeting digital technologies, clean and resource-efficient technologies including net-zero, and biotechnologies,” it wrote in a press release.

Support for autonomous robots, gen AI, agritech

Elsewhere, the Work program also includes an updated set of EIC Challenges, which aim to encourage innovation in priority areas. About €120 million is pegged for “emerging technologies” like autonomous robots, as well as for climate resilient crops, converting waste to input materials, and medical diagnosis.

There is also €250 million ringfenced for earlier stage companies in specific target technologies — including generative AI, new space, agri tech, and future mobility solutions.

Elsewhere, the Commission said the 2025 Work program will increase access to Business Acceleration Services for emerging companies from countries with lower levels of research and innovation performance. It will also support projects that miss out on EIC funding find alternative sources by awarding them Seals of Excellence.

The EIC Work Program 2025 is built around three main funding schemes, per the Commission.

The first is a research focused track called EIC Pathfinder, which has a budget of €262 million for “multi-disciplinary research teams to undertake visionary early-stage technology research and development with the potential to lead to technology breakthroughs.” This track will award grants of up to €4 million to successful applicants.

The second is a commercialization-focused track called EIC Transition, which has a budget of €98 million with the goal of turning research results into “innovation opportunities.” These grants can go up to €2.5 million.

Thirdly, there’s a startup and SME track — called EIC Accelerator — which has the largest budget: €634 million. It will be deployed to support startups and SMEs to “develop, commercialise and scale up innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones.” These grants will be below €2.5 million, and investments will stretch from €500,000 to €10 million.

The EIC STEP Scale-Up scheme sits atop these tracks to provide additional funding to promising companies in areas the EU sees as critical.

“Direct financial support to innovators is complemented with access to a wide range of business acceleration services and support actions offering leading expertise and linking with corporates, investors and ecosystem actors,” the Commission added.