European Commission announced a new group of eight companies to receive €10 and €30 million investments to support them in the crucial scale-up phase to establish a market position.
Among the selected companies, there is also a strong health and life sciences innovator: Aignostics from Germany. The company uses AI to transform drug development and improve patient outcomes by making biomedical data more usable for precision medicine.
The other selected companies focus on a broader range of strategic technologies across quantum computing, space, energy, and advanced materials, including:
The investments are part of the EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up call.
Out of 44 companies that submitted their proposal, 28 were invited to interview with independent high-level experts.
Eight 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 €146.5 million of equity investments (between €10 and €30 million per company).
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, proposals will be batched at following dates: 6. May 2026, 9 September 2026, 25 November 2026.
It is one of a range of calls being implemented across multiple EU programmes to support strategic technologies.
