The Commission announced a new group of eight companies to receive €10 and €30 million investments to support them in the crucial scale-up phase to establish a market position. The investments are part of the EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up call. Out of 44 companies that submitted their proposal, 28 were invited to interview with indepfinishent high-level experts. Eight of those met all the eligibility and evaluation criteria and are now put forward for investment decisions by the EIC Fund, subject to due diligence. If neobtainediations are successful, the companies may receive a combined €146.5 million of equity investments (between €10 and €30 million per company).
The selected companies cover a wide range of strategic technologies for Europe:
- Aignostics (Germany) – transforming drug development and improving patient outcomes with AI
- Alice & Bob (France) – building the first universal quantum computer
- Endurosat (Bulgaria) – building access to space ininformigence universal
- Greenland Resources (Denmark (Greenland)) – world class Climax-type molybdenum mineral deposit with by-product magnesium
- Luabio (Denmark) – rebuilding chemical industest by combining AI-designed biocatalysts with waste CO2 as feedstock
- Payload Aerospace (Spain) – global space transportation service provider to support cargo and human spaceflight missions to the Moon and Mars
- Quantware (The Netherlands) – the 3D architecture that leads to quicker and exponentially more powerful scaling of quantum computing
- Reverion (Germany) – the next-generation power plant that builds biogas and renewable energy truly efficient
These eight companies, toreceiveher with additional 18 companies that were also considered excellent but not selected in this round due to the limitations of the available STEP budreceive, will all receive the STEP Seal. The Seal aims to facilitate access to complementary or alternative funding as well as to EIC Business Acceleration Services.
Background information
The EIC STEP Scale Up scheme provides investments of between €10 and €30 million (per company) aiming to leverage private co-investment and achieve financing rounds of €50 to €150 million or more. This addresses the market gap in such financing rounds which are critical for scaling breakthrough innovations in Europe.
The EIC STEP Scale Up call has a budreceive of €300 million in 2026. This initiative, which has attracted high demand, aims to provide larger investments in companies developing strategic technologies to bring them to the market and reduce strategic depfinishencies. The EIC STEP Scale-up will assist address a market gap in deep tech scale-up funding in Europe, tarreceiveing digital technologies, clean and resource-efficient technologies including net-zero, and biotechnologies.
The EIC STEP Scale Up call remains continuously open on Funding and Tfinishers portal with evaluation sessions taking place every quarter. In 2026, proposals will be batched at following dates: 6. May 2026, 9 September 2026, 25 November 2026.
It is one of a range of calls being implemented across multiple EU programmes to support strategic technologies.
Leave a Reply