Call for Proposals: Challenge-Driven GenAI4EU Booster

Deadline: 2 October 2025

The European Commission is currently accepting submissions for the Challenge-Driven GenAI4EU Booster topic.

Scope

Generative AI (GenAI) promises to transform most industry sectors. This challenge-driven initiative aims to boost both Europe’s developer community and the adoption of powerful trustworthy generative AI solutions in the strategic sectors of aerospace, pharma/drugs and telecommunication networks, key for their competitiveness.
Each proposal should focus exclusively on one of the three key sectors mentioned above: aerospace, pharma/drug development, or telecommunications and clearly specify which sector it addresses. Each proposal is expected to focus primarily on the definition, the organization of a multi-stage competition in the chosen sector, as well as the accompanying support to the companies/teams taking part in the challenges, and related activities to maximise the impact of the action.
User industry companies from the strategic sector targeted by the proposal should be core partners in the consortium. They should demonstrate a genuine interest in the projects results and therefore support the challenge participants – in order to reach the most powerful and exploitable results benefitting their industry. The expected results are pre-competitive but the proposal must include a draft exploitation plan outlining commitments on future exploitation. The consortium is responsible for the various stages of the challenges and should provide the necessary support resources during each stage of the competition, including technical assistance and business support to develop an exploitation strategy, but most importantly, provide the data necessary to fine-tune models and build powerful solutions meeting industry needs.
Proposals should be driven by impactful use-cases where generative AI can make the difference:
- a number of industries from the targeted sector are expected to join forces to define challenging problems to solve with GenAI solutions, which then drive the rest of the project. Based on such challenges, the consortium organises a multi-staged competition with an increasing level of complexity. In the first two stages, third parties, either single companies (typically start-ups or SMEs) or small team of organisations built around such start-ups/SMEs, compete to address the challenges with GenAI solutions. After these stages, the solutions retained for the last stage will be invited to join the consortium, as full beneficiaries.
For each proposal:
- Stage 1:
  - a challenge, open to all, will allow to select for stage 2 the 20 highest ranked solutions, according to a pre-defined selection process and criteria. Each solution competing for the challenge can be submitted either by a single start-up/SME, developer of GenAI solutions, or a small team of organisations built around such start-up/SME
- Stage 2:
  - the 20 solutions selected from stage 1 receive EUR 250 000 FSTP funding, in form of a grant, in order to address the challenge set for this stage by the consortium. At the end of stage 2, the 4 highest ranked competing solutions will be selected for the next stage according to a pre-defined selection process and criteria.
- Stage 3:
  - after the end of stage 2 and the corresponding FSTP scheme, the 4 selected solutions will be invited to join the consortium and receive EUR 2 millions grants each (as part of the eligible costs of the grant agreement) to prepare for the grand finale. The consortium should define measures to maximise the impact for the team winning the grand finale at the end of the third stage, and maximise the uptake of their solutions (for instance, the best performing team could be offered the opportunity to conclude partnerships or contracts with the user industries leading the consortium. Measures to support the broad uptake of their solutions in the whole sector should also be considered).

Funding Information

Budget (EUR) – Year 2025: 45 000 000
Contributions: around 15000000

Expected Outcomes

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
- Significant technology progress and innovation through challenge-driven approach in the fields of aerospace, pharma/drug development or telecommunication networks.
- Increased competitivity and visibility of the Generative AI community in Europe, in demonstrating their capability to achieve challenging tasks within the aerospace, pharma/drug development or telecommunication sectors.
- Increased adoption of Generative AI in aerospace, pharma/drug development or telecommunication networks through tangible progress and achievement demonstrated via the challenge-driven process.

Eligibility Criteria

Entities eligible to participate:
- Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from nonassociated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call/topic.
- A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
To become a beneficiary, legal entities must be eligible for funding.
To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
  - Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
  - Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
- countries associated to Horizon Europe;
  - Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.