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The primary half of 2024 will see a rise within the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) investments into tech startups by way of its Accelerator programme, in comparison with final yr, in line with an EU official.
The EIC is aimed toward de-risking deeptech corporations and has a €1.2bn funds to spend this yr: €675m of that might be channelled by its startup-focused Accelerator programme, certainly one of its three schemes for backing early-stage, research-led companies.
The EIC Accelerator provides startups grants of as much as €2.5m mixed with fairness investments by the EIC Fund starting from €5k upwards. In 2023, the EIC Fund made 71 deeptech investments in whole, changing into certainly one of Europe’s most lively supporters of those applied sciences.
A sluggish begin
Following a bumpy begin and delays within the rollout of Accelerator, founders ought to now expertise a extra agile expertise of coping with the EIC, says the official, who requested to not be named.
The funder is implementing numerous adjustments to its processes, together with the switch of its shares in European startups to the European Funding Financial institution (EIB).
“There’s a ramp-up of the offers,” the official says. “There was the expectation that many of those offers [from previous years] would go quicker however lots of them couldn’t really be carried out that shortly.”
Many of those offers will contain corporations engaged on AI, quantum and semiconductors, three areas deemed strategic for Europe, the official says.
“The hype is AI,” they add. “We’ve re-orientated ourselves to a big extent in direction of superior AI functions within the context of Accelerator.”
The downturn in VC funding is forcing founders to current their companies in a “extra modest and structured” means, the official says. “This creates a extra strong foundation for these offers to undergo… I anticipate the market to proceed to enhance however there is not going to be a whole flip due to the final uncertainty that we see all over the world.”
A giant yr in politics
As Europe heads for a raft of elections this yr, together with the European Parliament in early June, there’s additionally uncertainty over whether or not the EIC would obtain a top-up in its funds, because it did in 2023.
In a speech earlier this week, Belgium’s prime minister Alexander De Croo, whose nation has simply taken over the rotatory presidency of the Council of the EU, rallied the EU to extend innovation funding. He argued that the bloc ought to “swap to a better gear” to stay an “modern, artistic, capital-rich and productive continent”.
“The local weather insurance policies of China and the US comprise an abundance of carrots for his or her business whereas we, right here in Europe, all too typically seize for the stick. We’re leaving too little room for our corporations, too little room for innovation,” De Croo mentioned.
Is the remainder of Europe listening?
The distinction as we speak, the official says, is that Brussels and most EU member states have understood that the US innovation goes past tech corporations targeted on leisure and social media.
Initiatives just like the US Inflation Discount Act and the Chips Act are going to have a direct impression on Europe’s core industrial base, manufacturing, innovation and jobs.
And with higher international insecurity, the EU is more and more conscious that many deeptech improvements can even be important for its personal defence.
“Definitely the extent of cash we’ve is just not nonetheless enough,” the official says. “The realisation that this [tech and science innovation] is the idea on which we must always construct is completely different as we speak — so I’m optimistic.”
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