EIC Corporate Day with Philips: nine EIC-backed startups pitched health, beauty, sustainability and digital solutions

Brussels, June 2nd 2025

Summary

›On 28 May 2025 the European Innovation Council and Philips ran a Corporate Day that brought nine EIC-backed startups together with Philips innovation teams.
›The startups presented solutions across health technology, beauty, AI, sustainability and ultra-low-power IoT, and participated in reverse pitches, Q&A and one-to-one meetings.
›Philips framed the activity as a way to access pre-vetted companies aligned with its innovation priorities, while the EIC positioned the event inside its Corporate Partnership Programme.
›The EIC programme has run dozens of such initiatives since 2017 and reports a high satisfaction rate, but translating pilot-stage contact into industrial scale remains the critical test.

EIC Corporate Day with Philips: structured pitching meets corporate scouting

On 28 May 2025 the European Innovation Council hosted an EIC Corporate Day in partnership with Philips. The session gathered Philips innovation and procurement stakeholders together with nine startups from eight countries that are supported by EIC funding. The activity combined a reverse pitch by Philips, short company presentations, interactive question and answer sessions, and prearranged one-to-one meetings intended to surface concrete collaboration opportunities such as pilots, co-development projects or strategic investments.

Why Philips took part and what it said

Philips framed the exercise as an efficient way to access early stage but pre-selected companies that are prepared to address the company’s innovation priorities. Maarteen Van den Boogaard, Open Innovation Leader at Philips, said the company is committed to improving 2.5 billion lives per year by 2030 through meaningful innovation and partnerships. He described the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme as providing Philips with access to exceptional, pre-selected companies that can tackle technology challenges aligned with its mission.

Who presented: nine startups, diverse problem sets

The selected startups had solutions that touch on Philips’ core domains of health technology and consumer wellbeing, as well as adjacent areas of sustainability and digital services. They were chosen by Philips and prepared by the EIC to align with Philips’ innovation priorities. Below are the nine companies and their headline propositions.

Startup	Country	Headline solution	Potential relevance to Philips
CosmEthics	Finland	A normalised label database for product safety and ingredient transparency	Ingredient transparency and regulatory compliance for consumer health and beauty products
Ecopolplast	Poland	Circular thermoplastics produced from 100% recycled content	Sustainable materials for device housings, packaging and components
Elem Biotech	Spain	Virtual Humans and Virtual Human Twins for precision medicine	In silico trials, patient stratification and device safety simulations
Linknovate Science	Spain	AI-driven intelligence for corporate innovation scouting and monitoring	Augmented scouting and horizon scanning for Philips R&D and strategy teams
Nafici Environmental Research	United Kingdom	Converting agricultural residues into high-quality paper pulp for sustainable packaging	Alternative packaging supplies and circularity solutions
ONiO	Norway	Ultra-low-power microcontrollers enabling batteryless IoT	Low-power sensing and asset tracking for healthcare and consumer devices
Raiku Packaging	Estonia	100 percent natural, compostable packaging materials	Compostable protective packaging for fragile goods and medical disposables
Voiseed	Italy	Generative AI for expressive voice production and dubbing	Localized and expressive audio for patient engagement, media and product interfaces
Xsensio	Switzerland	Lab-on-Skin biochemical sensing platform for continuous patient monitoring	Wearable biochemical monitoring and early-warning systems for clinical care

Startups explained in context

Reverse pitch:A reverse pitch flips the usual script. Instead of startups pitching to corporates to win business, the corporate outlines specific technical or business challenges it wants solved. The format helps align expectations early and can accelerate matchmaking because both sides work from defined problem statements.

Virtual Humans and Virtual Human Twins:This term describes computational patient models that simulate physiology, pharmacokinetics and organ responses. They combine mechanistic models, clinical data and machine learning to run in silico trials. The technique can reduce reliance on animal testing and accelerate early safety assessments, but regulators typically require rigorous validation and transparency before modelling data can be used for approvals or reimbursement decisions.

Lab-on-Skin sensing:Lab-on-Skin platforms miniaturise biochemical assays into wearable chips that sample and analyse biomarkers at the skin surface. They promise continuous, real-time biochemical monitoring outside hospital settings. The technical challenges here include robust sensor calibration, biofouling resistance, clinical validation, data governance, and integration with clinical workflows.

Batteryless microcontrollers and energy harvesting:Batteryless IoT devices harvest ambient energy sources such as light, radio frequency fields or mechanical motion to power ultra-low-power microcontrollers. This reduces maintenance costs for distributed sensors but requires careful system design for duty cycles, energy budgets, latency and reliability in clinical or industrial environments.

Generative AI voice technology and ethical constraints:Generative voice systems synthesize speech with controllable emotional tone and can clone voices when consent is given. The technology raises ethical, legal and IP questions. For healthcare and consumer applications the practical considerations include consent management, data security, bias mitigation, and regulatory scrutiny where synthetic voices interact with patients.

Voices from the field

Philips positioned the day as part of its effort to scale innovation through partnerships rather than internal R&D alone. From the startups side, Ecopolplast’s founder and CEO Katarzyna Pokwicka-Croucher said the event helped them better understand Philips’ needs and identify alignment with their offering. She said the Corporate Partnership Programme allowed them to engage directly with Philips’ innovation team and that they were looking forward to further collaboration.

Where this sits inside EIC activity and what the programme claims

The event is part of the EIC Business Acceleration Services and specifically the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme. According to the EIC text accompanying the event, the Corporate Partnership Programme has organised 74 initiatives with more than 120 corporate partners since 2017. The EIC reports that over 1,200 EIC-funded startups and scaleups and more than 2,500 corporate high-level representatives have taken part, with reported follow-ups and business deals coming from these initiatives.

The programme positions itself as a broker of pilots, co-development partnerships and strategic investments. It targets large corporations with an open innovation mindset that are prepared to integrate startup innovation into procurement, R&D and investment activities.

Critical perspective and practical barriers

These Corporate Days are a useful scaffolding to expose startups to corporate buyers, pilot opportunities and potential investors. They lower search costs for both sides and can seed long term collaborations. However, a few persistent gaps often remain between an initial corporate meeting and durable commercialisation.

First, many startup claims are early stage and framed in aspirational terms. Marketing statements such as "Europe’s largest normalised label database" or large percentage CO2 reductions need verification and independent benchmarks. Second, pilots do not always translate into procurement at scale. Pilots can reveal integration, regulatory, supply chain or reimbursement hurdles that are costly to mitigate. Third, governance and data issues are especially acute for health applications that collect biometric or sensitive health data. Finally, generative AI and voice cloning companies face reputational and legal risk unless consent, provenance and IP are handled transparently.

Operational and regulatory realities

Corporates and startups working across medical devices, diagnostics, and patient monitoring must navigate clinical validation, medical device regulation, data protection and cybersecurity. For materials and packaging companies, lifecycle analysis, industrial scale manufacturing and certification for medical or food contact use are real gating items. Technology readiness level and demonstrable customer pilots matter as much as the novelty of the core idea.

Recommendations for corporates and startups who use these programmes

For corporates: define what success looks like before the day. If you want a pilot, make clear who will pay, whose infrastructure will host the pilot, which regulatory guardrails apply and what success metrics will trigger further procurement. Plan a path from pilot to scale including procurement timelines and supply chain expectations.

For startups: prepare concise evidence packages. That includes reproducible performance data, manufacturing scale plans, regulatory pathway maps, IP status and realistic commercial scenarios. Be explicit about what you want from the corporate partner, whether it is customer access, a paid pilot, co-development funds or follow-on investment.

Implications for the European innovation ecosystem

The EIC Corporate Partnership Programme is part of a broader push inside the EU to accelerate deep tech commercialisation by connecting public-backed innovators with corporate demand and capital. These interactions can help Europe close the so-called scaleup gap if they convert into procurement, industrial partnerships and follow-on funding. Success will depend on sustained commitments from corporates, flexibility in procurement and blended financing models that can de-risk pilots and first-of-a-kind production.

Events such as the Philips Corporate Day are stepping stones. Their ultimate value should be measured not by the number of meetings but by how often a meeting leads to a funded pilot, a long-term supply contract, or a strategic investment that brings technology to market at industrial scale.

How to follow up or get involved

The EIC Corporate Partnership Programme accepts corporate applications and runs curated Corporate Days and Multi-Corporate Days across sectors. Corporates interested in joining the programme are invited to apply to the EIC Business Acceleration Services and to use the EIC channels to scout EIC-backed startups. Startups should use the EIC community channels and the BAS newsletter to remain visible to corporate partners and to track open calls for sponsored pilot opportunities.

Disclaimer: the information in this article is drawn from the EIC announcement of the Philips Corporate Day and accompanying company materials. The claims made by participating startups and corporates are reported here as presented during the event. Independent verification of technical performance, sustainability claims and commercial outcomes is necessary before procurement or investment decisions.