As part of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator Program for 2022, the Commission has selected 78 startups and SMEs receive up to 470 million euros in funding.
Depending on its needs, each company receives up to €17.5 million in grants and/or equity investments.
The latter will be done through the EIC fund, which is now “fully operational” established in Luxembourg after appointment Change Domus as an external fund manager to streamline and prevent the payment process for shares delays in the past.
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The selected companies are spread across 17 EU and EEA countries, with the addition of Israel and the UK.
Among them, 17% of startups and SMEs are based in Germany, 14% in the Netherlands and 12% in France and Spain respectively. These countries together make up 53% of the total selection.
Below is a detailed chart of the number of selected companies in each country:
And you can see on the map below that the selected startups are mainly located in Western and Northern Europe, while the eastern countries in the EU/EEA are not represented at all:
In particular, the sector attracting the most funding from the EIC is healthcare, with 51% of selected companies offering technologies for medical solutions. Other sectors include mobility, climate management, energy storage, agriculture, manufacturing and AI.
Here are three notable examples from the finalists:
- Spanish Inbrain Neuroelectronics develops graphene for the development of neural interfaces and seeks to revolutionize the treatment of neurological disorders.
- established in Estonia Efenco aims to reduce natural gas needs and carbon emissions in industrial use by enabling industry to transition to hydrogen with HERC, a new plasma-assisted combustion (PAC) technology.
- Energy Dome in Italy is working on a long-term battery energy storage system based on a closed thermodynamic loop using CO2 as the working fluid. The properties of carbon dioxide allow the system to store energy efficiently and cost-effectively.
These 78 companies will join the 314 selected so far for funding by the European Innovation Council. This will undoubtedly grow as the EIC’s Accelerator Fund has secured €1.13 billion for 2023.
