The European Innovation Council (EIC) 2024 work program is officially active. It opens funding opportunities worth over 1.2 billion euros for the next year, mostly dedicated to SMEs and startups to develop and scaleup “deep tech” innovations in critical fields such as generative AI, Space economy, critical raw materials, semiconductors, quantum computing technologies. This goes alongside a restructuring of the EIC Fund, which will receive a capital injection of 585 million euroa to invest in EIC selected companies, leveraging over 2 billion euros in new investments.

While the majority of EIC funding is open to all fields of technology, a chunk of 420 million euros is earmarked for novel technologies and for SMEs and startups to tackle challenges supporting directly EU policies like the European Green Deal, the Chips Act or the future AI Act. In line with the Commission's strategy on economic security, applications in critical areas such as AI and quantum will be screened for foreign ownership and investment safeguards.

The EIC work program 2024 divides the funding in three main schemes. The fist is EIC Pathfinder (worth 256 million euros) for multi-disciplinary research teams to undertake visionary research with the potential to lead to technology breakthroughs (grants up to 4 million euros per project).The EIC Transition scheme (94 million euros) is aimed at turning research results into innovation opportunities, following up on results generated by EIC Pathfinder projects, European Research Council Proof of Concept projects and - for the first time Horizon collaborative projects (grants up to 2.5 million euros).

The EIC Accelerator scheme (675 million euros) funds startups and SMEs to develop and scaleup innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones. 405 million euros are earmarked for investments to be managed by the EIC Fund, which will receive an additional 180 million euros to follow on investments in companies selected under previous EIC Accelerator calls.