Submit Applications for EIC Accelerator 2025

The EIC Accelerator supports companies (principally SMEs, including start-ups) to scale up high impact innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones. The EIC Accelerator provides a unique combination of grant and investment funding and Business Acceleration Services.

The EIC Accelerator focuses in particular on innovations building on scientific discovery or technological breakthroughs (‘deep tech’) and where significant funding is needed over a long timeframe before returns can be generated (‘patient capital’). Such innovations often struggle to attract financing because the risks and time period involved are too high. Funding and support from the EIC Accelerator is designed to enable such innovators to attract the full investment amounts needed for scale up in a shorter timeframe.

The EIC Accelerator supports the later stages of technology development as well as scale up. The technology component of your innovation must therefore have been tested and validated in a laboratory and other relevant environment (e.g., at least Technology Readiness Level 5). The EIC Accelerator looks to support companies where the EIC support will act as a catalyst to crowd in other investors necessary for the scale up of the innovation.

Topics

• Applicants to EIC Accelerator can submit proposals through Topics:
  • EIC Accelerator Open, which has no predefined thematic priorities and is open to proposals in any field of technology or application;
  • EIC Accelerator Challenges in predefined areas of emerging and strategic technologies.

Funding Information

• The total indicative budget for this call is EUR 634 million. EUR 384 million of the total indicative budget will be allocated to EIC Accelerator Open and EUR 250 million to EIC Accelerator Challenges.
• The indicative budget for investment components is EUR 348 million and is managed by the EIC Fund. This budget may be increased by unused amounts allocated to the EIC Fund under previous EIC Work Programmes.
• The EIC Accelerator provides:
  • grant component only (‘Grant Only’) that will take the form of a lump sum contribution via a grant agreement. Grant only shall be provided only once to any legal entity for the duration of the Horizon Europe programme (2021-27) and under the following cumulative conditions:
    • the project shall include information on the capacities and willingness of the applicant to scale-up;
    • the beneficiary shall be a start-up or an SME
    • a grant-only support under the Accelerator shall be provided only once to a  beneficiary during the period of implementation of the Programme for a maximum of EUR 2.5 million.
• The 30% co-funding of the work packages to be covered by the grant component has to be financed by the beneficiary through its own resources.

Eligibility Criteria

• To be an eligible applicant to EIC Accelerator, you must apply as one of the following eligible entities:
  • a single company classified as a SME, and established within a Member State or an Associated Country; or
  • a single company classified as a small mid-cap (up to 499 employees) established in a Member State or an Associated Country, but only for “investment component only” support or for “blended finance” in exceptional cases for rapid scale up purposes; or
  • one or more natural persons (including individual entrepreneurs) or legal entities, which are either:
    • from a Member State or an Associated Country intending to establish an SME or small mid-cap (as defined above) in a Member State or Associated Country by the time of signing the EIC Accelerator grant agreement or, in case the equity only is awarded, at the latest at the date of signature of the investment agreement;
    • intending to invest in an SME or small mid-cap established in a Member State or an Associated Country and may submit a proposal on behalf of that SME or small mid-cap, provided that a prior agreement exists with the company. The grant agreement and/or the investment agreement will be signed with the beneficiary/ final recipient of funding company only, subject to the “Approach in specific cases relating to a parent or holding company and an operating company” (see below); or
    • from a non-associated third country intending to establish an SME (including start-ups) or to relocate an existing SME to a Member State or an Associated Country. The company must prove its effective establishment in a Member State or an Associated Country at the time of submission of the full proposal.

For more information, visit European Union.