EIC backs 34 Transition projects with €79.3 million to push lab innovations toward market readiness

The European Innovation Council announced on 8 February 2023 that it has selected 34 projects from the September 2022 EIC Transition call and allocated a combined €79.3 million in Horizon Europe grant funding. Individual Transition grants can be worth up to €2.5 million. The call mixed open funding with three targeted challenge strands: green digital devices, integration of clean energy technologies, and RNA-based therapies and diagnostics for complex or rare genetic diseases.

Numbers, scope and selection

The successful proposals were chosen from a larger pool of eligible submissions. The selected teams come from 17 EU member states and Horizon Europe associated countries. The distribution across the call modalities was: 27 projects funded under open funding, 4 projects under the Green digital devices challenge, 2 projects under the RNA-based therapies and diagnostics challenge, and 1 project under Process and system integration of clean energy technologies. Each selected project will use funding to mature technology results from earlier research activities and to develop a business case for future commercialisation.

Representative projects and technical context

The EIC highlighted several exemplar projects from the selected cohort. These capture the variety of technological approaches and sectors that the Transition instrument is intended to de-risk and ready for commercial uptake. Below are the projects the Commission singled out and additional context to help judges their potential and remaining hurdles.

Why EIC Transition matters and how it fits the European innovation ecosystem

The EIC Transition stage is a deliberate bridge between early high-risk research and commercialisation. It is meant to take outputs from EIC Pathfinder, FET or ERC-funded projects and validate them in environments that approximate real-world use. The funding is non-dilutive grant support accompanied by access to the EIC Business Acceleration Services. Selected projects can also use a fast track to apply to the EIC Accelerator for blended grant and equity support when they are ready to scale. For Europe's innovation policy, Transition aims to increase the conversion rate of frontier research into investable companies and products and to strengthen strategic autonomy in deep tech fields.

What to watch and remaining obstacles

EIC Transition grants reduce technical and early market risk but do not guarantee commercial success. The most common bottlenecks after Transition stage are fundraising for scale, industrial partnerships for manufacturing, regulatory clearances especially in medical and energy domains, and supply chain constraints for critical materials. Intellectual property protection and freedom to operate are also critical. For many of the projects selected, reaching the market within a typical venture timeframe will depend on the ability to attract private co-investment and to demonstrate repeatable performance at scale.

The EIC architecture offers a route to blended public-private funding via the EIC Accelerator and the EIC Fund, but companies often still need multiple funding rounds, anchor customers, and integration partners. Observers should watch whether the Transition cohort successfully uses BAS to secure industrial pilots, procurement leads or follow-on finance and whether the Challenge-targeted projects translate into policy-relevant demonstrators that help Europe reduce strategic dependencies in critical tech.

Selected EIC Transition projects from the September 2022 cut-off

The table below reproduces the list of projects and the recommended budgets published by the EIC. Budgets are the recommended grant amounts for each selected Transition project and reflect the typical up to €2.5 million ceiling per project.

Practical implications and final assessment

The EIC Transition awards are an important and predictable source of non-dilutive capital for mid-stage technology maturation across a wide set of strategic fields. They also reflect a policy aim to accelerate translation of EU-funded frontier research into products and companies that can contribute to Europe’s competitiveness in deep tech. That said, grant awards are an early milestone rather than an end point for commercialisation. Most projects will need to secure private follow-on capital, industrial partnerships, and regulatory approvals before they reach markets at scale. Observers and stakeholders should monitor the cohort for concrete outcomes in pilot deployments, industrial pilots, procurement wins or successful follow-on financing rounds as the real test of Transition effectiveness.

The EIC programme offers a more integrated path from high-risk research to market through its suite of instruments and the EIC Fund. Transition is a key component of that pipeline but does not remove the long lead times and systemic barriers inherent in deep tech commercialisation. For policy makers the challenge remains to complement grants and acceleration services with stronger mechanisms to crowd in private growth capital and to reduce regulatory and manufacturing bottlenecks for strategic technologies.