EIC ePitching on AI and Machine Learning: what happened, who pitched and why Innatera stood out

Brussels, October 4th 2023

Summary

›On 27 September 2023 the European Innovation Council hosted an online ePitching event that matched seven EIC-backed AI and ML innovators with more than 30 investors.
›Innatera Nanosystems won the pitching session for its neuromorphic, ultra-low-power inference chips, a claim framed by the company as 100x faster and up to 500x lower energy than conventional processors.
›Presentations covered diverse areas from quantum-inspired AI and model compression to GNSS-based weather sensing, soil carbon MRV, clinical decision support and expressive synthetic voices.
›Investors praised the maturity and preparation of EIC-backed companies while cautioning that technical claims need reproducible benchmarks, commercial validation and strong teams combining science and go-to-market experience.
›The ePitching is part of the EIC Business Acceleration Services and its Ecosystem Partnerships and Co-Investment Support Programme which aim to prepare beneficiaries for investor meetings and stimulate co-investment with the EIC Fund.

EIC ePitching on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning — event snapshot

On 27 September 2023 the European Innovation Council ran an online ePitching session focused on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The event formed part of the EIC’s Business Acceleration Services and its Ecosystem Partnerships and Co-Investment Support Programme. Seven selected startups presented to a curated room of more than 30 investors with expertise in AI and deep technology. The goal was matchmaking and early-stage investor engagement rather than public product launches.

The presenting companies covered a broad swath of AI-enabled approaches and use cases. Technologies included neuromorphic edge processors, quantum and quantum-inspired optimisation for AI, AI-enhanced molecular modelling for drug development, GNSS-derived atmospheric sensing for hyperlocal forecasting, clinical reasoning grounded in a medical knowledge graph, satellite and statistical approaches for soil carbon monitoring, and expressive text-to-speech and dubbing tools.

Who pitched and what they do

Company	Core technology and application	Funding stage and raise target (as stated in EIC materials)
BioSimulytics	Physics-based, AI/ML-enabled in-silico platform for crystal structure prediction and drug form selection	Seed round, raising approximately €6 million
Skyfora	GNSS-based atmospheric tomography and AI weather nowcasting for hyperlocal forecasting	Series A, raising approximately €5 million
Innatera Nanosystems	Neuromorphic inference chips for ultra-low-power sensor edge intelligence	Series A, raising approximately €15 million
Kahun	Clinical reasoning engine using a proprietary medical knowledge graph to ground generative AI	Seed round, raising approximately $10 million
Multiverse Computing	Quantum and quantum-inspired optimisation and model compression tools for AI and industrial problems	Series A, raising approximately €5 million
Seqana	Satellite, spatial statistics and ML for MRV of soil organic carbon in regenerative agriculture	Seed round, raising approximately €3 million
Voiseed	Expressive AI voice generation and dubbing technology with phonemization and emotion control	Series A, raising approximately €5 million

Innatera takes the spotlight and the winner’s caveats

Innatera Nanosystems was named the winner of the pitching session. The Delft University of Technology spin-off pitched neuromorphic inference chips designed to run sensor-perception workloads with much lower latency and power compared with conventional processors. Innatera’s leadership framed the company as delivering both speed and sustainability gains that matter for battery-powered devices, wearables, robotics and automotive sensor stacks.

Neuromorphic computing:Neuromorphic computing refers to architectures inspired by the brain’s event-driven, massively parallel processing. Instead of the clocked, dense matrix multiplications common in conventional GPUs and CPUs, neuromorphic chips use asynchronous spikes or sparsity to perform inference. The idea is lower energy per operation for certain sensory and temporal workloads.

Claims and necessary scrutiny:Innatera said its chips can process sensor data roughly 100 times faster while using up to 500 times less energy than conventional processors. Those are headline numbers that matter if true. Independent benchmarking, workload definitions, and end-to-end system comparisons matter. Performance on a narrow benchmark or in lab conditions does not automatically translate into product readiness across the automotive or wearables supply chains. Fabrication, software tools, model portability, safety certification and partner integrations are the critical next steps for neuromorphic startups seeking to scale.

Sumeet Kumar, Innatera’s CEO, positioned the company as aligned with European priorities on low-power edge AI and highlighted the quality of investors and organisation at the event. His investor-facing messaging emphasised consumer and automotive use cases and a five-year horizon for broad deployment. Those are reasonable targets but the timeline depends on hard engineering milestones and supply chain partnerships.

What else stood out among the seven pitches

Multiverse Computing and model compression:Multiverse used the stage both to pitch its broader quantum and optimisation platform Singularity and to launch CompactifAI, a model compression product that claims to shrink large language models while keeping accuracy intact. Model compression encompasses pruning, quantisation, distillation and algorithmic compression. The potential gains are substantial because the cost and energy of training and deploying modern LLMs are high. But compression introduces trade-offs for accuracy, robustness and privacy. The company positions its offering for easier deployment and lower cost for customers across finance, energy and manufacturing.

Skyfora and GNSS atmospheric sensing:Skyfora converts existing GNSS infrastructure and 5G tower receivers into dense atmospheric sensors to feed high-resolution nowcasts. GNSS tomography uses signal delays caused by the atmosphere to reconstruct humidity and other parameters in 3D. Denser, faster telemetry can improve short-term forecasts and nowcasts, which is valuable for energy, telecoms, critical infrastructure and defence. The commercial question is how quickly telecom operators and regulators adopt the required data sharing and software updates at scale.

Kahun and clinical reasoning:Kahun presented a clinical decision support layer built on an evidence-based knowledge graph of medical insights intended to ground generative AI outputs in clinical practice. Knowledge-graph grounding is a common attempt to reduce hallucinations from large language models. For medical use cases, regulatory compliance, clinical validation, liability and integration with existing electronic health records are key hurdles. Investors will look for prospective outcome studies and documented improvements in clinician workflows.

Seqana and soil MRV:Seqana addresses measurement, reporting and verification of soil organic carbon using satellite imagery, spatial statistics and ML to reduce sampling cost. Soil carbon projects face real challenges: high spatial variance, evolving standards from carbon registries, and the need for conservative, verifiable claims. Seqana’s product fits the growing demand for robust MRV methods in voluntary carbon markets and corporate insetting but must keep pace with changing methodological rules and buyer expectations.

BioSimulytics and in-silico drug form prediction:BioSimulytics presented CHEMINA, a platform combining physics-based crystal structure prediction, AI and HPC to predict polymorphs and support drug form selection. Predicting solid form polymorphism can reduce late-stage surprises in manufacturing and intellectual property coverage. The value is practical when computational results reliably match experimental XRD and scale to larger, more complex molecules.

Voiseed and expressive voice technology:Voiseed offered expressive, phonemization-based text-to-speech and dubbing tools, highlighting its patent-pending Xpressive technology and ethical safeguards for voice cloning. The company noted ISO 27001 certification. In voice tech the product-market fit is strong across localisation, media and e-learning but regulatory and ethical guardrails for cloning and consent remain a live issue for buyers and platforms.

Investors in the room and their perspectives

Investors attending included pan-European VCs and corporate venture arms. The list named by EIC covered Amadeus Capital Partners, BASF Venture Capital, Caixa Capital Risc, Capricorn Partners, Crowberry Capital, Cusp Capital, DN Capital, eCapital, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Inven Capital, Matterwave VC, NGP Capital, Octopus Ventures, Omnes Capital, Redalpine, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, Speedinvest, UVC Partners and No Such Ventures among others. Their presence reflects growing investor appetite for AI applied to industry and hardware, provided founders can show traction.

Investors present	Type
Amadeus Capital Partners	Deep tech VC
BASF Venture Capital	Corporate VC
Caixa Capital Risc	Corporate VC / regional investor
Capricorn Partners	VC
Crowberry Capital	VC
Cusp Capital	VC
DN Capital	Transatlantic VC
eCapital	European deep-tech VC
High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF)	Seed VC
Inven Capital	Energy/industrial investor
Matterwave VC	Industrial tech VC
NGP Capital	B2B-focused VC
Octopus Ventures	Multi-stage sector-focused VC
Omnes Capital	Private equity and sustainable infrastructure
Redalpine	Early-stage deep tech VC
Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH	Corporate VC
Speedinvest	European early-stage VC
UVC Partners	Deep tech VC
No Such Ventures	Software-focused seed VC

Investors praised EIC-backed companies for preparation and maturity. Fernanda Aguiar from NGP Capital noted the high quality and commercial readiness, saying EIC companies are often at pre-commercial or commercial stages which makes them relevant for investors. Volker Hirsch of Amadeus Capital Partners highlighted the EIC selection as a quality signal and underlined the importance of teams that blend scientific excellence with commercial operators.

What investors typically look for at such events:Investors at ePitchings are testing three things quickly. First, the claim versus evidence gap: is there reproducible performance data and real customer validation. Second, team composition: can founders translate science into a sellable product. Third, the path to scalable manufacturing or distribution, particularly critical for hardware and regulated sectors.

EIC context and the role of these pitching programmes

The ePitching sits under the European Innovation Council’s Business Acceleration Services and the Ecosystem Partnerships and Co-Investment Support Programme. The EIC aims to create sector-focused networks and to promote co-investment alongside the EIC Fund by preparing beneficiaries for investor engagement and arranging matchmaking events and follow-on investor meetings.

EIC Business Acceleration Services (BAS):BAS provides coaching, mentoring, and investor matchmaking to companies that have received EIC backing. The programme aims to increase beneficiaries’ readiness for scale and for attracting private capital while helping navigate regulatory, commercial and scaling challenges.

EIC co-investment support:Alongside its selection and grant programmes the EIC manages an EIC Fund designed to co-invest with private capital. The Ecosystem Partnerships programme is intended to expand the EIC’s reach through sector specialists so that beneficiaries can find the right investors and co-investors.

Upcoming follow ups and broader events

The EIC ecosystem continues with sector-focused investor days. In October 2023 the EIC announced a healthcare-focused Investor Day in Paris on 23 October organised with EuroQuity-Bpifrance. Such events are free but limited in capacity and targeted at qualified investors, including VCs, corporate VCs and family offices. The EIC encourages investors to sign up to its Co-Investment Platform to maximise matchmaking opportunities.

Reading the signals for Europe’s AI and deep tech ecosystem

Events like the EIC ePitching are useful early indicators of where European innovation is moving. The mix at this session showed two important trends. First, compute and energy efficiency at the edge is a live investment theme. Second, there is rising interest in combinations of AI with other advanced technologies such as quantum-inspired optimisation, GNSS sensing and precision MRV for climate markets. That said the session also highlights persistent gaps.

Hardware claims need to be matched by pilot customers and supply-chain partners. AI and life sciences propositions need clinical and regulatory evidence. Carbon MRV products must map to buyer standards and registries to create monetisable removals. Investors' enthusiasm depends on tangible adoption signals, defensible IP and repeatable economics.

The EIC stamp helps overcome a first-filter problem for investors by preselecting technically promising ventures. But for systems-level bets the hard work remains building manufacturable products, scaling commercial sales, and proving that claimed efficiency or accuracy gains hold in the field. For European policymakers and funders the lesson is familiar: continued support across the valley of death between lab and market makes the difference between technology demonstrations and durable companies.

Practical takeaways for stakeholders

For founders: prepare independent benchmarks, customer pilots and clear roadmaps for certification or deployment. For investors: probe engineering readiness and supply-chain partnerships in hardware or regulated sectors. For policy makers: continue funding translational stages and help align MRV and medical standards so market demand can convert into reliable revenue streams.

If you want to explore the companies mentioned and the EIC programme, the EIC publishes company descriptions and organises follow-up investor events. For questions about the original ePitching event the EIC provided an events contact address: events@eicfund.eu.

Full investor quote extracts

Fernanda Aguiar, NGP Capital: "The quality is always super high. When companies come to these events they are already at a great stage of pre-commercialisation or already commercialising the product which makes it also really relevant for us as investors."

Volker Hirsch, Amadeus Capital Partners: "The mix of scientific excellence and commercial awareness is, I think, the one thing I would look at most. A smart scientist with a really cool idea and an experienced operator commercial person can create some magic."

Disclaimers and context

This article restructures and expands the content presented by the European Innovation Council at the ePitching event. Claims by participating companies are those of the companies. Independent validation and publicly available benchmark data are required to verify comparative performance and energy claims. The EIC provides matchmaking and acceleration services but does not itself endorse specific investment decisions.