The Commission announced the second group of companies that have successfully passed the evaluation phase of the EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up call. Together receiving up to a total of €90 million of equity investments, they will now go forward to the EIC Fund for investment decisions, subject to due diligence.
All of them receive equally the STEP Seal which aims at facilitating access to complementary or alternative funding as well as to EIC Business Acceleration Services.
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.
Out of 19 companies that submitted their proposal to the first batch, five were invited to interview with independent high-level experts, and four that meet all the criteria will be put forward for investment decisions by the EIC Fund.
The selected companies cover a range of strategic technologies for Europe:
- Multiverse Computing (Spain) - quantum/AI
- Hyimpulse Technologies (Germany) - satellite launch services
- Dronamics (Bulgaria, Ireland) - drones for cargo delivery
- Classiq technologies (Israel) - quantum software
The EIC STEP Scale Up call remains continuously open with evaluation sessions taking place every quarter.
Background information
The EIC STEP Scale-up call has a budget of €300 million in 2025 and a projected growth to €900 million over the period 2025-2027. This initiative 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.
It is one of a range of calls being implemented across multiple EU programmes to support strategic technologies.
More information
Details
- Publication date
- 12 June 2025
- Author
- European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency