Accelerator: strong performance of engineering and tech-based companies in the latest €350 million funding round
Summary
A large majority of selected companies (68%) will receive blended finance option, which is a combination of grants and equity investments. The selected companies have a geographical spread spanning 15 countries, including four widening countries.Here are some examples of the innovative projects and companies that will receive support: Axelera AI from the Netherlands (project Axelera Europa) - a novel hardware & software platform to revolutionise artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge Vsora from France (project Superchip) - scalable unified processor enhancing revolutionary computing, harnessing integrated performance for edge AI, autonomous driving, generative AI, and decentralised AIoT applications Quside Technologies from Spain (project RPU) - quantum-based randomness processing units (RPUs) for high-performance computation and data securityIn most cases, the companies will receive the grant financing within the next two to three months, while the first investment decisions will be made within two months. A further 91 applications that met all the criteria at the remote evaluation stage and that were assessed positively by the EIC jury, but not recommended for funding, will be awarded a Seal of Excellence to help them find alternative sources of funding, including from the Recovery and Resilience Funds and European Regional Development Funds.The June cut-off saw some more companies coming from the Plug In scheme, where applicants that are put forward by national innovation programmes and are immediately invited to submit a full proposal, skipping the usual first step of submitting and getting approval for a short proposal.The EIC Accelerator offers start-ups and SMEs grants of up to 2.5 million combined with equity investments through the EIC Fund ranging from 0.5 to 15 million or more. In addition to financial support, all projects benefit from a range of Business Acceleration Services that provide access to leading expertise, corporates, investors and ecosystem actors.Companies can submit their ideas to the EIC Accelerator at any time, which are then evaluated within approximately 4 weeks. For ideas meeting the EIC criteria for excellence, impact and risk-level, companies are invited to prepare full applications to submit to one of the regular cut-off dates.