EIC Pathfinder awards €138 million to 45 projects as EU backs high-risk early-stage research
- ›The European Innovation Council selected 45 projects under the 2024 EIC Pathfinder Open call for a total of up to €138 million.
- ›45 projects were chosen from 1,110 evaluated submissions representing 25 countries, with most participants from Italy, Germany, Spain and France.
- ›Selected teams are mainly from higher education and research organisations with about 22 percent coming from SMEs.
- ›Projects span health, AI, computing, environment and energy and will receive grants plus access to tailored coaching through EIC Business Acceleration Services.
- ›Highlighted projects include MUSMET on a musical metaverse, EcoSentinel on plant-based digital networks, and ELEQUANT exploring flying-electron qubits.
EIC Pathfinder: €138 million committed to early stage, high-risk research
On 5 September 2024 the European Innovation Council announced funding for 45 new projects under the 2024 EIC Pathfinder Open call. The awards amount to up to €138 million in grants intended to support early stage, interdisciplinary research that could enable radically new technologies. The selected projects cover a wide set of domains including health, artificial intelligence, computing, environmental monitoring and energy technologies.
Selection, funding and applicant profile
The 45 successful proposals were chosen from 1,110 evaluated submissions. Participating teams come from 25 countries with the largest representations from Italy, Germany, Spain and France. Institutional backgrounds skew heavily to higher education and public research organisations while small and medium enterprises account for roughly a fifth of participants. Besides grant funding, awardees gain access to the EIC Business Acceleration Services for coaching and market preparation.
| Metric | Value | Notes |
| Total projects selected | 45 | From the EIC Pathfinder Open 2024 call |
| Total EU contribution | €138 million | Grants to selected projects |
| Submissions evaluated | 1,110 | Implied selection rate about 4 percent |
| Countries represented | 25 | Top origins: Italy, Germany, Spain, France |
| Participant types | Higher education 46%, Research orgs 22%, SMEs ~22% | Remainder comprises other organisations and partners |
| Grant ceilings | Up to €3 million or up to €4 million | Pathfinder Open grants typically up to €3 million. Pathfinder Challenges can reach €4 million |
Three illustrative projects and what they aim to do
Technical context and realistic hurdles
The EIC Pathfinder portfolio deliberately targets high uncertainty research. That approach helps create entirely new direction s but it also means many projects will not reach commercial maturity. Translating laboratory outcomes into deployable technology requires additional steps such as reproducibility checks, engineering under real world constraints and often substantial follow-on investment. The EIC design recognises this reality by linking successful Pathfinder outputs to EIC Transition funding and by providing routes to EIC Accelerator support for market readiness.
For the three example projects above the immediate technical hurdles are tangible. For MUSMET the engineering problems include reliable low-latency audio and expressive interfaces that musicians will adopt. For EcoSentinel the bottlenecks are energy availability, signal-to-noise in natural environments and ethical safeguards. For ELEQUANT coherence times, fabrication of complex heterostructures and detector sensitivity at terahertz frequencies are core physics and materials science challenges. Each ambition will likely require several iterative cycles of research and engineering before application level demonstrations are credible.
How the EIC supports progression and commercialisation
Ecosystem implications and distributional notes
Participant composition with nearly half coming from higher education and roughly one fifth from SMEs is typical for Pathfinder calls. That mix highlights the scheme s role in creating university led exploratory consortia rather than directly underwriting start-up scale up. The country concentration in Italy, Germany, Spain and France mirrors broader patterns in EU research funding. The EIC has measures to widen participation but structural disparities across member states remain visible in application and selection statistics.
The declared total of up to €138 million is significant for early stage work but modest relative to the capital needed later in the innovation chain. Public grants are valuable to de-risk science but follow-on capital and industrial partnerships are usually necessary to take technology to commercial scale. The EIC framework attempts to provide those pathways but success depends on execution by teams and alignment with market or societal demand.
Next steps and practical information
The EIC Pathfinder Challenges 2024 call was open for applications with a deadline on 16 October 2024 at 17:00 CET. Projects that wish to progress beyond Pathfinder should plan for additional technical validation, regulatory checks where relevant and strategies to attract follow-on investment. Teams should also make realistic plans for data management, reproducibility and ethical review when their work interacts with living systems or sensitive data.
For observers and policy watchers the most important evaluation criteria over the coming years will be which Pathfinder projects translate into robust proof of concept demonstrations and which of those then secure Transition funding and private investment. That sequence is the real test of whether a high risk public science investment leads to technological and economic impact.
Quick reference table of the Pathfinder 2024 call
| Item | Detail | Comment |
| Call | EIC Pathfinder Open 2024 | |
| Projects selected | 45 | From 1,110 evaluated submissions |
| Total allocated | Up to €138 million | Grant funding only for these projects |
| Primary sectors | Health, AI, computing, environment, energy | Representative but not exhaustive |
| Beneficiary profile | Higher education 46%, Research orgs 22%, SMEs ~22% | Other participants include public bodies and industry partners |
| Follow-up routes | EIC Transition, Fast Track to Accelerator, EIC Business Acceleration Services, EIC Fund | All subject to separate selection and eligibility |
| Pathfinder grant size | Up to €3 million (Open) or €4 million (Challenges) | Funds TRL 1 to 3 activities through to proof of concept |
Final assessment
The EIC Pathfinder awards are a reminder that the European Union continues to invest in long horizon science with potential for disruptive technology. The projects described are unconventional and imaginative. That is the point of the Pathfinder instrument. At the same time, funders and the public should remain realistic about the timelines and technical obstacles ahead. Success will require technical breakthroughs to be matched by engineering, regulatory work and financing to make meaningful societal or commercial impact.