Call for Applications: EUDIS Business Accelerator Programme

The EUDIS Business Accelerator is designed to support 20 start-ups and scale-ups over an 8-month defence accelerator programme to strengthen their position in the European defence industrial ecosystem. With a focus on coaching, training, testing opportunities, networking, and matchmaking, the programme provides participants with the expertise, connections and resources needed to scale their technologies, grow, and gain market opportunities.

Themes

• Collaborative Combat & Autonomous Operations
  • Enhancing military operational effectiveness and decision-making across land, air, maritime and cyberspace domains. This theme focuses on creating highly adaptive and resilient combat environments where advanced technologies enable seamless coordination between manned and unmanned systems, ensuring effective human-machine cooperation in high-intensity scenarios.
• Cyber Warfare & Information Superiority
  • Cyber threats continuously evolve, targeting military systems, communications, and data integrity. Advanced, automated defence solutions are essential to counter these threats in real time, ensuring operational resilience, mission assurance, and the protection of sensitive information.
• Combat Medicine & Battlefield Health Resilience
  • Ensuring rapid, data-driven medical support is essential to providing real-time, adaptive care in defence operations. These innovations enhance survivability, decision-making and medical readiness by integrating AI and automation ensuring faster diagnosis, optimized treatment, and improved outcomes for military personnel in high-risk situations
• Open Call – Disruptive Technologies for Defence Superiority
  • Developing next-generation breakthrough defence technologies to maintain tactical and strategic superiority across land, air, maritime, cyber and space domains for European armed forces. This theme seeks (enabling) technologies with potential disruptive and high-impact outcome on military operations if successful.

Funding Information

• 65,000€ Seed Voucher:
  • Paid in two tranches (20%/80%) for each company based on progress in relation to the objectives set at the beginning of the EUDIS Business Accelerator programme

Additional Benefits

• Tailored coaching & ad-hoc expertise hours:
  • 300+ hours of expert coaching per company from coaches and experts of the defence industry
• Workshops from top quality defence trainers:
  • From the ecosystem featuring defence industry, defence end-users and investors
• Six onsite bootcamps:
  • Starting in June 2025 until February 2026 in 6 European locations alongside major defence events
• Networking opportunities within the defence ecosystem:
  • Onsite & virtual continuous opportunities through site visits, panel discussions, after works and pitch sessions
• Unique access to testing facilities:
  • On-demand access providing exclusive environments to validate and simulate solutions in realistic scenarios

Eligibility Criteria

• Geographic and control requirements: Companies must be established in an EU Member State or Norway. Furthermore, these companies should not be under the control of a non-associated third country or a non- associated third-country entity. However, a target group company established in the EU Member States or Norway that is controlled by non-associated third-country, or a non-associated third-country entity, might be eligible to participate if they already have guarantees approved by the EU Member State or Norway in which it is established.
• Company stage: Eligible companies must be either Start-ups or Scale-ups that are in their growth stage. Companies should have already developed a functioning prototype or product that is on the market, and they must have achieved some level of sales or pre-commercial success in either the commercial or defence market.
• Defence market focus: Companies must be aiming to enter the defence market or strengthen their existing position within the European defence ecosystem. This focus is essential as the accelerator activities are focused on training companies for success withing Europe’s defence industry.
• Relevance to the EUDIS Business Accelerator Technology Themes: The products, technologies, or services ocered by the companies must be relevant to the objectives of the EUDIS Business Accelerator themes. This ensures that the selected companies are strategically aligned with the programme’s goals and can maximally benefit from the accelerator activities.
• Location of infrastructure and resources: The infrastructure, facilities, assets, and resources of the participating companies, used for the purposes of the EUDIS Business Accelerator, must be located within the territory of an EU Member State or Norway.

For more information, visit EU.