The EIC selects new European scale-ups for STEP Scale Up investments

The European Commission announced a new group of companies selected to receive investments of up to €30 million to help them scale up and establish a strong market position. The investments are part of the EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up call. Out of 24 companies that submitted their proposal, 17 were invited to interview with independent high-level experts. Six of those met all the eligibility and evaluation criteria and are now put forward for investment decisions by the EIC Fund, subject to due diligence. If negotiations are successful, the companies may receive a combined €97 million of equity investments (between €10 and €30 million per company). 

The selected companies cover a wide range of strategic technologies for Europe:  

• Cailabs (France) - building the ground systems that make laser communications deployable;
• Cylib (Germany) - transforming end-of-life batteries into critical raw materials;
• Paebbl (The Netherlands) – turning CO₂ into future-proof building materials;
• SiPearl (France) - designing high-performance central processing units (CPUs) for sovereign data centres and accelerated computing;
• Skeleton Technologies Group (Estonia) - developing rack-to-grid power systems engineered for the demands of next-generation AI compute infrastructure;
• Vsora (France) - delivering ultra-high-performance AI inference solutions for both data centers and edge deployments.

These six companies, together with additional six companies that were also considered excellent but not selected in this round due to the limitations of the available STEP budget, will all receive the STEP Seal. The Seal aims to facilitate access to complementary or alternative funding as well as to EIC Business Acceleration Services.   

Background information  

The EIC STEP Scale Up scheme provides investments of between €10 and €30 million (per company) aiming to leverage private co-investment and achieve financing rounds of €50 to €150 million or more. This addresses the market gap in such financing rounds which are critical for scaling breakthrough innovations in Europe.   

The EIC STEP Scale Up call has a budget of €300 million in 2026. This initiative, which has attracted high demand, aims to provide larger investments in companies developing strategic technologies to bring them to the market and reduce strategic dependencies. The EIC STEP Scale up will help address a market gap in deep tech scale up funding in Europe, targeting digital technologies, clean and resource-efficient technologies including net-zero, and biotechnologies.   

The EIC STEP Scale Up call remains continuously open on Funding and Tenders portal  with evaluation sessions taking place every quarter. In 2026, the remaining dates for proposals batching are 9 September 2026 and 25 November 2026.  

It is one of a range of calls being implemented across multiple EU programmes to support strategic technologies.