Incircular awarded €2.5 mln EIC Transition Grant

Venture Challenge alumnus Incircular was one of the 42 projects that received a EIC transition grant in the first ever round of this new scheme to support projects to take breakthrough technologies from the lab into the real world.

Out of a total of 292 proposals that were submitted the European Innovation Council has selected 42 projects that altogether will receive €99 mln of EU funding.This new scheme is designed to turn research results generated by EIC Pathfinder pilot projects and European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept projects into commercially viable ventures, by validating the technologies in real world settings and building the business case to bring the innovations to market. It was designed in a partnership between the EIC and the ERC with advice from members of the ERC Scientific Council and the EIC pilot Advisory Board.

The scheme supports both single entities (research teams, SMEs, spin outs) as well as small consortia (up to 5 partners from different countries). The successful participants come from 24 EU Member States and Horizon Europe associated countries, with the highest number of participants coming from Germany (25), Italy (17) and Spain (14).

EIC Transition funds innovation activities that go beyond the experimental proof of principle in laboratory to supports both:

• Maturation and validation of a novel technology from the lab to the relevant real world application environment;
• Development of a business case and (business) model towards the innovation’s future commercialisation.

Each project will receive a grant of up to €2.5million (more in exceptional cases) and will have access to EIC Business Acceleration Services including coaching, mentoring, and partnering events. Projects are also eligible for the Fast Track scheme to access the EIC Accelerator for supporting the commercialisation and scale up phases.

Source: EIC