EIC Investor Day on Industrial Tech: deep tech founders meet European investors

On 24 and 25 January 2023 the European Innovation Council organised an online Investor Day focused on industrial technology. The event gave 21 EIC-backed innovators a stage to pitch technologies across logistics, drones and drone software, robotics, connectivity and IoT, and construction and advanced materials. The goal was matchmaking with investors and to concentrate investor attention on capital intensive, hardware or applied-science projects that often struggle to find appropriate funding.

Format, participants and why it matters

The EIC Investor Day combined public pitching rounds with private one-to-one meetings between founders and investors. The investor delegation included a broad cross section of Europe-focused venture capital and corporate venture arms. Names present included Amadeus Capital Partners, Contrarian Ventures, Diffusion Capital Partners, Earlybird Venture Capital, EQT Ventures, Experior Venture Fund, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Inven Capital, Iris Capital, Matterwave VC, NGP Capital, Octopus Ventures and Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH. For deep tech and industrial hardware startups this kind of focused access is valuable because suitable investors are fewer and deal timelines are typically longer than for consumer software.

What the winning teams presented

Founder Hendrik Thamer said the team joined because of a positive history with EIC events and because Cellumation was actively raising in a financing round. The company emphasised flexibility and footprint reduction as commercial advantages that could matter in dense warehouse environments. Those claims are attractive to investors but should be tested at scale for throughput, reliability and maintenance costs when compared with established intralogistics technologies.

Elias Kleinmann noted the remote event was professionally organised and that the pitching coaching and follow up generated three relevant one-on-one meetings for Wingtra. For companies selling professional drones the path to scale depends on a mix of hardware reliability, software for data processing, recurring services and navigating national airspace regulation for commercial operations.

Mulundu Sichone said PYDRO had previously received EIC Accelerator Blended Finance which combines grant and equity investment and that the Investor Day aimed to find co-funding. He recommended more events focused on water startups to reach specialised investors and partners. Energy harvesting sensors solve an important operating cost problem for municipal water networks but practical deployment requires robustness to low or intermittent flows, biofouling, and integration with utilities systems.

Brian Jester credited the pre-event pitching coaching with forcing focus and concision in a short format. For investors, companies in precision fermentation must demonstrate scalability, reproducible yields in industrial bioreactors, downstream processing costs and regulatory pathways for new biomaterials or ingredients. The time and capital required to reach commercial scale are often substantial.

The EIC Business Acceleration Services investor programme

The programme is designed to overcome a common problem in European deep tech finance which is a mismatch between investor specialisation and founders looking for capital. The EIC also promotes an online events calendar and publishes video impressions from investor events.

What the investor line up signals

The presence of established European VCs and corporate venture arms such as Amadeus, Earlybird, EQT Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Octopus Ventures and Robert Bosch Venture Capital shows continued institutional interest in industrial and deep tech. These investors have different mandates and cheque sizes, with some focused on seed and series A and others able to follow into late rounds. For founders this matters because long technical development needs patient capital and potentially strategic corporate partners for piloting and distribution.

Realities and risks that investors will want to test

Pitch events are useful for introductions but investors will dig deeper on unit economics, manufacturability, regulatory risk and pilot references. Specific technical and commercial risks include the following. For modular intralogistics hardware like the celluveyor verify lifetime maintenance costs, real throughput under mixed SKU operations and software reliability. For VTOL mapping drones and robotics the regulatory environment and the economics of recurring services are decisive. For self-powered IoT devices energy harvesting must be proven under many field conditions and device-to-cloud integrations must meet utilities security and data standards. For precision fermentation expect long and capital intensive scale-up cycles and the need to validate downstream processing and quality control at industrial scale.

Claims such as '95 percent less space' or 'world's first' are strong marketing points and worth investor attention. They may be true in specific comparisons or lab settings but need corroboration with third party pilots, independent benchmarking and customer references before they become reliable inputs to a valuation.

Practical advice for founders preparing for investor days

Founders targeting industrial and deep tech investors should prepare focused materials that answer the following questions. What customer problem are you solving and at what price point. What are the unit economics and expected path to profitability. Who are early reference customers and what did those pilots prove. What is the roadmap and capital required to reach commercial scale. What regulatory or certification gates exist and how will you clear them. Which strategic partners or corporates could accelerate market access.

Concluding assessment

The EIC Investor Day on Industrial Tech packaged useful investor access with pitching coaching and initial matchmaking. The four pitching winners illustrated the range of industrial deep tech that European public innovation programmes now back from intralogistics hardware to drones, energy-harvesting IoT and precision fermentation. That dynamic is positive for European industrial innovation but founders need to convert early interest into validated pilots, robust unit economics and credible scale plans to secure the patient capital these technologies require. The EIC Business Acceleration Services remains a practical route to introductions but investors will follow up with detailed technical and commercial due diligence.

For teams eligible to participate keep an eye on the EIC events page and consider the monthly ePitching sessions or future Investor Days. EIC beneficiaries can also look at blended finance options such as the EIC Accelerator which combines grant and investment, but they should plan for co-funding and the long sales and regulatory cycles typical in industrial markets.