European Innovation Council: Work Programme

Overview

The EIC work programme 2025 details the funding in four main schemes:

• EIC Pathfinder (€262 million) for multi-disciplinary research teams to undertake visionary research with the potential to lead to technology breakthroughs (grants up to €4 million).
• EIC Transition (€98 million) to turn research results into innovation opportunities, following up on results generated by EIC Pathfinder projects, European Research Council Proof of Concept projects and open to project results from Horizon collaborative projects from Pillar 2/ societal challenges (grants up to €2.5 million).
• EIC Accelerator (€634 million) for start-ups and SMEs to develop and scale up innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones (grants below €2.5 million, investments from €0.5 to €10 million). 
• The EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up (€300 million), which will provide additional equity funding to promising companies (SMEs, start-ups, spin-offs and small mid-caps) driving innovation in critical areas to help them secure larger private co-investment for further scaling their businesses (investments from €10 to €30 million). 

In each case, the direct financial support to innovators is complemented with access to a wide range of Business Acceleration Services providing access to leading expertise, corporates, investors and ecosystem actors.

Highlights

• The new STEP Scale up scheme, which will work with a budget of €300 million in 2025 (and expected to grow to €900 million over the period 2025-27) to provide larger investments in companies aiming to bring strategic technologies to the EU market and avoid strategic dependencies. It will provide investments of between €10 and €30 million through the EIC Fund per company to leverage private co-investment, achieving at least €50 to €150 million in total. The EIC STEP Scale-up scheme 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.
•  An updated set of ‘EIC Challenges':
  • €120 million for emerging technologies including autonomous construction robots , climate resilient crops, converting waste to input materials and medical diagnosis.
  • €250 million for earlier stage companies in specific target technologies including generative AI, new space, agri tech, future mobility solutions.
• Increasing access to Business Acceleration Services for emerging companies from ‘widening countries’ (countries with lower levels of research and innovation performance).
• The award of Seals of Excellence under the Transition and Accelerator calls, and the new STEP Seal under the STEP Scale up and Accelerator Challenge calls. These Seals aim to facilitate access to complementary and alternative funding sources such as Cohesion Policy Funds as well as to the EIC Business Acceleration Services.