EIC Scaling Club members pass €1.2 billion milestone in collective fundraising

Brussels, September 3rd 2025

Summary

›120 European deep tech scaleups in the EIC Scaling Club have collectively raised more than €1.2 billion since joining the programme.
›Cohort 1 reports a 58.27 percent funding increase since April 2024 with a median round size of €22.34 million.
›Next-Gen Computing, Renewable Energies and Smart Mobility are the top-funded sectors within the Club.
›A handful of large deals drive much of the total, including Multiverse Computing's €256 million in 2025 and several other multimillion euro rounds.
›The Club provides biannual networking events and 1:1 investor meetings as part of a two year acceleration programme that runs until October 2026.

EIC Scaling Club members pass €1.2 billion milestone in collective fundraising

What happens when a curated group of Europe’s deep tech scaleups is brought together with investors, corporate partners and public funding intermediaries? According to the European Innovation Council’s Scaling Club the answer is significant fundraising momentum. At the EIC Scaling Club Ambition Forum in Riga on 3 September 2025 the Acting Director of the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency, Stéphane Ouaki, announced that the Club’s 120 member companies have cumulatively raised more than €1.2 billion since joining the programme.

Numbers behind the headline

The EIC Scaling Club is a two year, curated acceleration community funded by the European Innovation Council. Its stated aim is to help selected European deep tech scaleups grow into globally competitive businesses. The Club was filled in two cohorts. The first cohort joined in April 2024 and the second cohort followed six months later. EIC communications highlight specific growth metrics for each cohort that point to both capital and team expansion.

Cohort 1 funding growth:Reported as a 58.27 percent increase in funding since these companies joined in April 2024. The communication gives a median funding round figure of €22.34 million for this cohort.

Cohort 2 team growth:The second cohort, which joined six months after the first, is reported to have increased team size by 27.7 percent over the programme period to date.

Taken together the Club’s members generated a cumulative €287.6 million in 2024 and surpassed €910.6 million in 2025. Those yearly totals sum to the headline figure in the announcement and reflect an accelerating rate of fundraising during 2025.

Where the money went

EIC data identifies three market groups as the largest recipients of funding among the Club members during the period covered in the announcement. The figures below are presented by the EIC as totals for the Club across each sector with an accompanying average round size. These are headline aggregates and will be dominated by the largest transactions.

Sector	Reported total raised	Average round size reported
Next-Gen Computing	€447.1 million	€37 million
Renewable Energies	€220.7 million	€22 million
Smart Mobility	€133.8 million	€22 million

Largest individual deals mentioned

A small number of very large financings account for a sizable share of the total raised. The EIC announcement lists the following notable transactions from 2024 and 2025.

Company	Country	Reported 2024 and 2025 funding
Multiverse Computing	Spain	€67 million in March 2025 and €189 million in June 2025 for a total of €256 million in 2025
Axelera AI	Netherlands	€61.6 million in 2025 and €58.6 million in 2024
Aerones	Latvia	€53.4 million in 2025
EnduroSat	Bulgaria	€43 million and an additional undisclosed round in 2025; later reports show further sizable funding and a new space centre
H2Site	Spain	€36 million in 2025

What the Club offers and how fundraising is supported

The EIC Scaling Club is part of the EIC Business Acceleration Services. The programme is positioned as a curated community of 120 deep tech scaleups drawn from companies that previously benefited from EIC grants, other European programmes or national innovation schemes. Club members receive a package of non-financial services over the two year programme. The announcement emphasises biannual networking events and facilitated one to one meetings with deep tech investors as a core mechanism to accelerate fundraising.

Programme duration and next steps:The programme runs until October 2026. The next EIC Scaling Club event is scheduled for the first half of 2026 and the Riga Ambition Forum on 3 September 2025 was presented as one of the Club’s milestone gatherings.

Event and political context

The Ambition Forum in Riga was hosted by the University of Latvia and organised with the Latvian Investment and Development Agency, LIAA, as a partner. EIC Acting Director Stéphane Ouaki used the forum to frame the fundraising milestone as evidence that Europe is building investor support for future shaping technologies and can strengthen competitiveness, sustainability and security.

Egita Aizsilniece-Ibema, a member of the EIC Scaling Club Advisory Council and head of the Latvian office for Innovation and Technology in Brussels, underlined the importance of blended public and private financing for deep tech in Europe and positioned hosting the forum in Riga as an ecosystem building opportunity for Latvia.

Technical note on selected technologies mentioned

Palladium-alloy membrane reactors used by H2Site:Palladium-based membranes are metallic films or alloys with very high selectivity for hydrogen. When integrated into membrane reactors they can separate hydrogen from carrier molecules such as ammonia or methanol or from mixed gas streams with very high purity levels. The EIC announcement quotes H2Site’s membranes as delivering plus 99 percent purity and recovery factors up to around 98 percent in advanced systems. Those characteristics make palladium membranes attractive for fuel cell and industrial applications but they also pose cost and material supply considerations because palladium is a precious metal.

Model compression and Multiverse Computing’s approach:Model compression is a set of algorithmic techniques used to reduce the size and computational cost of AI models. Techniques include pruning, quantisation, knowledge distillation and specialised approximation algorithms. Multiverse Computing positions its technology as reducing the compute and energy cost of large language models through compression and optimisation, which can materially lower training and inference costs for compute heavy AI systems.

AI-native hardware like Axelera’s Metis family:AI-native hardware refers to chips and accelerators designed specifically to run neural network inference and training efficiently. Axelera’s product family, the Metis AI processing units, targets edge inference use cases with high TOPS per watt claims. Such hardware aims to reduce dependency on general purpose GPUs for inference workloads, particularly at the edge where power and form factor constraints matter.

Context within the EU innovation ecosystem

The EIC Scaling Club sits inside a broader EU effort to build a pipeline of deep tech companies. The European Innovation Council provides grants and business support and the EIC Fund provides direct venture investments. The EIC Fund is presented elsewhere as having a multibillion euro remit to bridge the patient capital gap that often constrains deep tech companies in Europe. Club membership is thus both a signal and a support channel for companies that have already attracted public backing.

Public programmes can reduce financing friction for risky deep tech ventures but they do not eliminate market and technical risk. The concentration of value across a few large rounds is consistent with venture market dynamics. It also means headline aggregates can overstate widespread scaling success when a handful of outliers dominate totals.

What to look for next and caveats

The EIC announcement is a milestone focused communication. It is informative about headline fundraising totals and selected metrics but it leaves some questions open about methodology. For example the press communication does not provide a detailed breakdown of what 'funding growth' measures, whether the reported median per round for cohort 1 excludes outliers, or the extent to which the cumulative totals include pre existing rounds closed before companies joined the Club. The selection of members from EIC and other innovation programmes creates a cohort that already had upward fundraising momentum before joining in some cases. That selection effect should be borne in mind when assessing attribution between Club services and subsequent investment outcomes.

Policymakers and investors will therefore want more granular follow up data on deal distribution, the share of public versus private capital in the totals, and longer term indicators such as revenue growth, customer traction and follow on rounds beyond 2025. The Club’s final event, scheduled before the programme ends in October 2026, will be an opportunity to publish a fuller evaluation.

Bottom line

The EIC Scaling Club’s announcement that its 120 deep tech members raised more than €1.2 billion is a useful data point on investor interest in European deep tech during 2024 and 2025. The figure helps illustrate the potential leverage of curated public acceleration services combined with investor access. At the same time the aggregate number is concentrated in a few large deals and needs to be read alongside caveats about selection effects and reporting definitions. For a fuller assessment of the Club’s impact the ecosystem will need detailed follow up data on deal composition, long term business outcomes and comparisons with non participating scaleups.

Source and disclaimer

This article restructures and analyses information provided by the EIC press release published on 3 September 2025 and related EIC Scaling Club material. The commentary adds context on EU innovation programmes and notes methodological caveats. The content here should not be interpreted as an official view of the European Commission or EISMEA.