As part of the 2022 European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator program, the Commission selected 78 startups and SMEs to receive up to €470 million in funding.
Depending on its needs, each company will get up to €17.5 million in grants and/or equity investments.
The latter will be made through the EIC Fund, which is now “fully operational” after appointing Luxembourg-based Alter Domus as an external fund manager to streamline the equity payment process and avoid past delays.
The selected companies span across 17 EU and EEA nations, with the addition of Israel and the UK.
Among them, 17% of startups and SMEs are located in Germany, 14% in the Netherlands, and 12% in France and Spain, respectively. These countries combined make up 53% of the total selection.
Below you can see a detailed graph of the number of companies selected in each country:
And you can observe on the map below, the selected startups are mostly located in Western and Northern Europe, while Eastern countries in the EU/EEA aren’t represented at all:
Notably, the sector that attracts most funding by the EIC is health — with 51% of the selected companies offering technologies for medical solutions. Other industries include mobility, climate management, energy storage, agriculture, manufacturing, and AI.
Here are three notable examples of the finalists:
- Spanish Inbrain Neuroelectronics is engineering graphene for the development of neural interfaces, seeking to revolutionize the treatment of neurological diseases.
- Estonia-based Efenco is aiming to reduce natural gas needs and carbon emissions in industrial usage by enabling the industry’s transition to hydrogen with HERC, a novel plasma-assisted combustion (PAC) technology.
- Energy Dome in Italy is working on a long-duration battery energy storage system based on a closed thermodynamic loop that uses CO2 as working fluid. Thanks to the properties of carbon dioxide, the system can store energy efficiently and cost effectively.
These 78 companies will join the 314 selected for funding by the European Innovation Council so far. This is bound to grow, as the EIC’s Accelerator fund has secured €1.13 billion for 2023.