EIC directs more than €180 million to cutting-edge technologies under Pathfinder Open 2022 call

On 18 October 2022 the European Innovation Council announced that 57 new projects were selected under the EIC Pathfinder Open 2022 call. The Commission allocated up to €183 million in grant funding to support early stage, high risk research aiming to open pathways to radically new technologies across fields such as health, energy, environment, computing and artificial intelligence.

What was awarded and who applied

This funding round is the second set of Pathfinder Open awards since the EIC was launched in March 2021. Projects were chosen from a large evaluation pool and will receive grant support together with nonfinancial services intended to help move laboratory results toward demonstrators and early validation.

How Pathfinder Open works

The EIC Pathfinder strand funds frontier research that aims to create new technological building blocks rather than incremental improvements. The call is bottom up which means proposals can be in any scientific or technological area. Grants support activities that are deliberately high risk and interdisciplinary with an aim of achieving a scientific advance that can enable future technological breakthroughs.

Selection profile and geographic distribution

The pool of 858 evaluated proposals yielded 57 selections. The highest numbers of selected applicants come from Spain, Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands. The majority of participating organisations are universities or research institutions. SMEs accounted for 18.5 percent of participants which signals that industry representation in this early stage research call was limited compared with the research sector.

Why this matters and what it does not yet deliver

The Pathfinder scheme is designed to stimulate speculative frontier research that can produce the knowledge and demonstrators needed for future deep tech. Grant funding at this stage is important because private investors rarely fund such low TRL work. Nonetheless there are limitations to what this support provides. Grants at TRL 1 to 3 move research only to proof of concept. Significant additional investment is typically required to de-risk technologies for industrial deployment and scale up. Nonfinancial support such as coaching improves the odds of downstream translation but does not close the funding gap that many European deep tech projects face when moving from lab to market.

How awardees should approach the next phase

Winning a Pathfinder grant is the start of a longer journey. Researchers and project teams should plan how to bridge the valley of death between proof of concept and marketable products. That involves intellectual property management, validating applications in relevant environments, engaging with potential industrial partners, and preparing for investor due diligence if additional finance will be needed.

Context within the EU innovation landscape

The EIC is one of the EU’s most visible instruments for supporting deep tech. It sits alongside other Horizon Europe instruments and the EIC Fund which provides equity investments via the Accelerator. Pathfinder grants respond to the recognised need for public funding of high risk foundational research. That role is particularly important in areas deemed strategically relevant to European competitiveness such as semiconductors, quantum, advanced materials and biotech.

At the same time policymakers and practitioners repeatedly point out the downstream financing gap for deep tech. Public grants create the R and D basis but follow-on private capital and scaleup ecosystems are necessary if Europe is to convert laboratory advances into industrial leadership. The EIC’s blended approach which combines grants and investment instruments is intended to mitigate this problem. Its effectiveness depends on coordinated national innovation policies, access to talent, and mature capital markets willing to fund long time horizon projects.

Bottom line

The October 2022 Pathfinder Open awards are a meaningful injection of funding into early stage, high risk research across Europe. They underwrite exploratory science that may enable future technologies. Beneficiaries gain grants and access to coaching and other acceleration services. Still, the work funded is far from market readiness and follow-up financing and partnerships will be decisive for impact. Observers and stakeholders should track whether Pathfinder outputs successfully feed into Transition projects, Accelerator pipelines or commercial ventures in order to judge the programme’s long term contribution to Europe’s deep tech capacity.