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EIC ePitching on SaaS: European SaaS startups meet a heavyweight investor panel

Brussels, May 10th 2023
Summary
  • ›The European Innovation Council organised an ePitching session on SaaS on 27 April 2023 that featured seven EIC-backed startups.
  • ›A jury of prominent European and international VCs attended including Balderton, Partech, Point Nine and Bosch RVC among others.
  • ›Treble Technologies was awarded best pitch for a fast wave-based sound simulation platform applicable to building, automotive and product design.
  • ›Startups presented technically deep solutions from edge ML to GNSS tomography and satellite super-resolution, attracting positive investor feedback.
  • ›The event is part of the EIC Ecosystem Partnerships and Co-Investment Support programme and is followed by sector-focused investor days, next on Healthcare in Munich on 19 June 2023.

EIC ePitching on SaaS: European SaaS startups meet investors

On 27 April 2023 the European Innovation Council ran an ePitching session focused on Software as a Service. The online event brought together seven EIC-supported companies and a long list of venture investors. The format paired short public pitches with the opportunity for virtual follow-ups and one to one meetings. The session is part of the EIC's Ecosystem Partnerships and Co-Investment Support programme that aims to increase investor access to EIC-funded innovators.

Who presented and the prize

Seven startups presented technical SaaS products spanning agriculture, edge and embedded AI, scientific language understanding, weather sensing, logistics optimisation, acoustic simulation and data centre acceleration. The presenters were DigiFarm, Ekkono Solutions AB, Iris.ai, Skyfora, Transmetrics, Treble Technologies and Xelera Technologies. The jury and audience recognised Treble, a sound simulation and virtual prototyping platform, as the best pitch of the afternoon. Treble's platform uses a wave-based acoustic engine to accelerate high-fidelity simulations for product, building and automotive design.

CompanyCore technology / verticalStage and funding ask (as presented)
Treble TechnologiesWave-based acoustic simulation and spatial audio for virtual prototypingSeries A, raising €20 million
Iris.aiScientific text understanding and a 'smart' language model focused on factualitySeries A, raising €12 million
TransmetricsAI platform for logistics planning and predictive optimisationSeries A, raising €6 million
Xelera TechnologiesNetwork and ML acceleration software for data centres and cloudSeries A, raising €5 million
Ekkono Solutions ABEdge machine learning and on-device incremental learning for IoTSeries A, raising €5 million
SkyforaGNSS-based hyper-local atmospheric sensing and nowcastingSeries A, raising €4 million
DigiFarmSuper-resolution satellite analytics and field delineation for agricultureSeed, raising €4.2 million

Who was in the investor jury

The event attracted a broad and experienced investor panel. Named participants included Balderton Capital, Caixa Capital Risc, eCapital, Elaia Partners, Experior Venture Fund, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Inventure, Iris Capital, Matterwave Ventures, NGP Capital, Octopus Ventures, Partech Partners, Point Nine Capital, Redalpine, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH and Target Global. Attendance recordkeeping suggested strong interest from both early stage and later stage firms that have an active SaaS allocation in Europe.

Investor and participant impressions

Investors and founders praised the technical depth and the presentation quality of the companies. Mira Kamp from Redalpine highlighted both the number of investors and the diversity of verticals on show. Kamp said the companies presented strong technical foundations and professional decks which she thought would help them when raising capital. Finnur Pind, co-founder and CEO of Trebble, said the event met expectations as an efficient way to plant seeds for future fundraising. Anita Schjøll Abildgaard, CEO and co-founder of Iris.ai, singled out the jury's questions as professional and substantive.

Investor composition and what it signals:A cross section of European VCs and corporate venture arms attended. That mix indicates EIC organisers aimed to attract both traditional venture capital and strategic corporate partners. For founders this is useful but it also creates mixed signals. Some investors are thesis driven while others look for short path to commercial integrations. Founders should expect follow up diligence to separate commercial interest from mere scouting.

Notable company highlights and technical concepts

Several presentations leaned heavily on technical differentiation. Iris.ai framed its offering as a 'smart language model' that prioritises factual grounding over the broader but often hallucination-prone large language models. Skyfora emphasised dense GNSS-derived atmospheric tomography as a missing data layer for nowcasting and resilient infrastructure. DigiFarm described super-resolution satellite processing and accurate field boundary detection as the basis for precision agriculture APIs. Ekkono demonstrated edge ML capable of on-device incremental learning and anomaly detection. Transmetrics presented logistics-focused predictive optimisation using historical demand patterns. Xelera highlighted software acceleration for machine learning and network workloads inside data centres. Treble showcased a wave-based acoustic solver that the company says is orders of magnitude faster than traditional methods.

Smart language model versus large language model:Iris.ai describes a 'smart language model' as an AI system engineered to prioritise factual retrieval and verifiable claims rather than producing fluent but potentially inaccurate text. The difference is architectural and operational. Smart models typically combine knowledge retrieval, strict citation or provenance systems, and evaluation layers to reduce hallucinations. This is relevant for R&D and regulatory contexts where factual accuracy matters more than broad conversational ability.
GNSS tomography for weather sensing:Global Navigation Satellite System receivers measure signal delays caused by atmospheric moisture. Skyfora fuses dense GNSS streams from telecom infrastructure and dedicated micronets to produce 3D and 4D reconstructions of moisture and refractivity. That adds observational density and short latency data that can improve short range forecasts and nowcasts, particularly over urban hubs where traditional sensors are sparse.
Edge incremental learning and anomaly detection:Ekkono's positioning is to run model training and adaptation on constrained hardware at the device edge. Incremental learning updates models continuously with new sensor streams to capture unit-level behavior. That reduces data transfer and latency but raises operational questions about governance, model drift monitoring and secure update mechanisms. For industrial IoT use cases, on-device learning can lower bandwidth and improve timeliness of fault detection.
Wave-based acoustic simulation:Treble uses a wave physics solver rather than purely geometric acoustic approximations. Wave-based methods capture interference, diffraction and modal behaviour that are important in small spaces and in product-level acoustics. Treble claims orders of magnitude performance improvements through algorithmic optimisations and cloud-native execution. Faster high-fidelity simulations matter for virtual prototyping and synthetic audio dataset generation for AI.
DPU, SmartNIC and ML acceleration in the data centre:Xelera focuses on software that exploits programmable data processing units and SmartNICs to offload networking and model inference workloads. The goal is deterministic low latency and higher throughput for ML inference or high frequency trading. Adoption depends on integration with cloud providers and orchestration frameworks plus the economics of hardware versus software tradeoffs.

Context and critical perspective

EIC ePitching sessions are useful discovery and matchmaking events. They lower the search cost for investors and provide visibility to startups. That said, investor interest at an online pitch does not automatically translate into term sheets. For deep technology and highly technical SaaS, the path to commercial revenue and scale can be longer than marketing slides indicate. Investors attending ranged from seed to late stage funds and corporate VCs. Each has distinct decision criteria. Founders should prepare for follow up requests that dig into customer traction, unit economics and technical validation.

From a European innovation policy angle, the EIC is attempting to catalyse private capital alongside its grant instruments. Programs that combine exposure to investors with co-investment support are a sensible policy lever. Matching founders with sector-savvy investors improves the chance that niche technical platforms will find the right industrial partners. The risk for public programmes is overpromising the speed of follow-on private investment. Co-investment outcomes need measuring over longer windows rather than immediate headline deals.

Practical implications for founders and investors

Founders: treat ePitching as an efficient investor outreach channel. Use it to test messaging, collect warm leads and schedule one to one meetings. Be ready with clear data on ARR, growth, churn, technical milestones and integration partners. For deep-tech SaaS be explicit about validation steps, testbeds and regulatory considerations.

Investors: these sessions give a quick way to screen technical founders and to identify commercially mature teams. Expect follow up diligence to require hands-on technical verification and customer references. Be wary of slide-driven narratives that rely heavily on long term market assumptions without near term revenue evidence.

Next EIC investor events and how to engage

The EIC announced further sector-focused investor events under its Ecosystem Partnerships and Co-Investment Support programme. The next in-person investor day was scheduled for 19 June 2023 in Munich with a healthcare focus and a curated list of EIC health innovators. EIC encourages investors to register on its Co-Investment Platform to make the most of matchmaking opportunities.

EIC Ecosystem Partnerships and Co-Investment Support programme:This programme extends the EIC Business Acceleration Services by creating sector-focused partnerships and helping EIC beneficiaries become investment ready. It combines matchmaking, investor education and event-based exposure to stimulate co-investment alongside EIC financing.

Final note and disclaimer

Events like the EIC ePitching are valuable for networking and early discovery. They provide transparency about the technical priorities emerging from EIC portfolios. At the same time readers should treat investor attendance and 'best pitch' awards as indicators of interest rather than guarantees of funding. The EIC itself warns that information shared at these sessions is for knowledge sharing and not an official Commission position.

If you are an investor interested in future EIC events register on the EIC Co-Investment Platform and monitor EIC Business Acceleration Services announcements. Founders who participated were DigiFarm, Ekkono Solutions AB, Iris.ai, Skyfora, Transmetrics, Treble Technologies and Xelera Technologies. For more structured follow up use the EIC channels and the individual company contacts shared in their investor material.

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