European Innovation Council official launching: EIC Accelerator 2021

Who is it for?

The EIC Accelerator supports principally start-ups and SMEs that have the potential to become technological champions and unicorns thanks to their deep-tech and market-disruptive solutions. The novelty in regards to the SME Instrument/ EIC Pilot Accelerator is that in some cases also small mid-caps (up to 500 employees) are eligible for receiving support (for TRL9 activities only, investment component only).

Applicants must be from an EU Member State or an Associated Country. Applicants from UK can apply for grant support, yet they are not eligible for investment.

What type of funding is available?

Similarly as in the EIC Accelerator Pilot, the types of funding are:

• Grant – up to €2.5 million; eligible costs are reimbursed up to 70% and during a project of up to 24 months. Applicants can apply for grant only or grant first, the latter can be followed up by the EIC equity.
• Investment component – between €0.5 million and €15 million in the form of blended finance combining equity (or quasi-equity such as convertible loans). A novelty is the possibility to apply for investment only.

What activities are financed?

No major changes here, the fully-fledged EIC Accelerator supports the innovation development stage (TRL 5/6 to 8) and deployment and scale-up (TRL 9). Activities above TRL8 cannot by funded with the grant.

What activities are financed?

The applicants can decide whether to submit a proposal for:

• Open calls – for innovations in any field of technology and interdisciplinary solutions (budget of €592.5 million),
• Challenge-driven calls – for innovations especially viable for one of the two areas of strategic relevance i.e. the European Green Deal and strategic Digital and Health Technologies (budget of €495.1 million).

The application process has been subjected to a radical change, both in terms of its structure and its execution.

Proposals are prepared and submitted via the EIC artificial intelligence-based IT platform, which will guide the applicant along the submission process as well as provide an assessment of the concept/ idea and coaching (at Step 2, see below).

The new application process consists of 5 steps:

Step 0: Discovery/Diagnostic modules

It involves a series of questions regarding the problem that the applicant wants to solve, the solution, its features and the targeted market. This step provides a set of indicators of the concept/ idea.

Step 1: Short application

It includes:

• A series of questions that correspond to a 5-page form, describing the details of the innovation, the potential market, and the team,
• A pitch-deck of up to 10 slides (no set format),
• A video pitch of up to 3 minutes where the core members of the team (up to three people) provide the motivation for the application.

Step 2: Preparation of full application

It consists of a full business plan and full information on your company’s finances and structure. It is supported by an updated pitch deck which will be used at the interview step. Moreover, the applicant must propose a set of milestones to be used as a basis for the EIC to manage the funding.

For the preparation of full application, the applicants will have up to 12 months after receiving the evaluation results on the short application. In this step, each applicant will be entitled to receive three days of remote coaching from the EIC Business Acceleration Services (though not available for resubmissions).

Step 3: Submission and remote evaluation

Submission of the full proposal and period of evaluation.

Step 4: Face to face Interviews

Final step that consists of a 10-min presentation by max 3 applicant representatives and before a 6-member jury, followed up by a 30-min Q&A.