EIC T2M Venture Building Tech Demo Day on AI: early-stage projects pitch, get expert feedback and move toward venture formation

Brussels, February 8th 2024

Summary

›The EIC Tech to Market Venture Building Programme held a Tech Demo Day focused on artificial intelligence for EIC Pathfinder and Transition projects.
›Two projects, ACHILLEUS and EMERGE, pitched AI innovations in phenotypic drug discovery and collaborative agent awareness respectively and advanced to the Opportunities' Exploration phase.
›Participants and experts praised the event for exposing teams to market feedback, networking and pitch practice while warning that early technical promise still needs rigorous market validation.
›The T2M Venture Building route maps four phases from Tech Demo Days to venture support services and is intended to help translate research outputs into startups but is currently paused and expected to resume in 2026.

EIC Tech to Market Venture Building Tech Demo Day on AI

In early February 2024 the European Innovation Council Tech to Market Venture Building Programme organised a Tech Demo Day focused on artificial intelligence. The event gathered researchers from EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition projects and a mixed panel of market and technical experts. Its stated goal was to accelerate the difficult transition from invention to marketable innovation by exposing early stage teams to critical feedback, go to market thinking and networking opportunities.

EIC Tech to Market Venture Building Programme:A European Innovation Council initiative designed to help teams funded by EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition turn research results into start ups. The programme offers staged activities including Tech Demo Days, feasibility assessments by business experts, team building support and advisory services on topics such as intellectual property, finance and HR.

Franc Mouwen, an EIC programme manager who collaborated on the event, framed the Programme as 'critical in the difficult transition from invention to innovation process.' He emphasised that even when technologies are at an early stage it is important to begin the entrepreneurial journey so teams can test assumptions and prepare for commercialisation.

Two AI projects in focus: ACHILLEUS and EMERGE

The Tech Demo Day featured short pitches from several projects. Two projects singled out in follow up interviews were ACHILLEUS and EMERGE. Both are research-led efforts that are still in scientific and technical development but are exploring routes to market through venture building support.

ACHILLEUS:Led from the German Cancer Research Center, ACHILLEUS is developing an AI powered phenotypic drug discovery platform. The system combines a living biobank of patient derived organoids with scalable machine learning image analysis to find candidate therapeutics that target stem cell signalling pathways in colorectal cancer. The project aims to identify novel drugs that could improve outcomes for patients with this common cancer.

EMERGE:Hosted at the University of Pisa, EMERGE explores collaborative awareness for collectives of minimal artificial agents. It seeks to enable better interoperability and cooperative behaviour through a new AI framework. The project describes an efficient neural computing paradigm combined with lifelong and evolutionary learning mechanisms to allow agents to adapt and collaborate over time.

What the teams said about the programme

Representatives from both projects reported practical benefits from participating in the first phase of the Venture Building Programme. They highlighted expert feedback, pitch practice and follow up meetings with stakeholders as the most tangible outcomes.

Rudy Semola, EMERGE:Semola described the experience as highly beneficial. He said feedback from experts offered fresh perspectives that helped refine the business idea. He also noted that the programme opened doors to deeper follow up conversations with technical and commercial stakeholders and helped the team learn how to communicate to non technical audiences through a five minute pitch exercise.

Florian Heigwer, ACHILLEUS:Heigwer stressed the advantage of access to market experts and industry contacts and the positive reinforcement from the EIC T2M team. He said the experts' feedback improved their pitch and helped the team frame a clearer value proposition for diverse audiences.

Expert panel takeaways and practical advice

The event included expert reviewers who assessed pitches and offered guidance. Two panelists cited in coverage were Belén Suarez, CEO at Go To Innovation, and Isabel Barberá, AI Advisor and Co Founder at Rhite. Both argued that the Venture Building Programme can address a recurrent gap in early stage research projects which is the translation of technical results into customer centred, scalable products.

Belén Suarez, Go To Innovation:Suarez said innovation means deploying solutions in the market. She noted that many teams miss robust go to market strategies and maintaining customer centricity from the start. She recommended training and development to better manage uncertainty and tackle scale up challenges.

Isabel Barberá, Rhite:Barberá argued that programmes like T2M help innovators learn what is required to bring products successfully to market. Her advice to early stage teams was to adopt a holistic approach, actively seek mentors with diverse backgrounds and leave comfort zones to learn from peers and stakeholders.

Both experts suggested practical priorities for teams to work on after demo days. Suarez urged teams to clarify the sustainability of their technology and the critical success factors that will guide research and innovation efforts. Barberá emphasised user research and communications so technical value is accessible to non technical decision makers and potential partners.

Programme progression and next steps for projects

After the Tech Demo Day both ACHILLEUS and EMERGE progressed to the Opportunities' Exploration phase. In that phase teams receive guidance on feasibility from experts with business insight and recommendations for improvement. Subsequent phases in the Venture Building track include team creation and targeted venture support services.

Programme phase	Purpose	Typical activities
Tech Demo Days	Initial assessment and exposure to market feedback	Thematic workshops, short pitches, expert reviews and networking
Opportunities' Exploration	Feasibility and business recommendation	Expert feasibility assessments and business oriented recommendations
Team creation	Forming a founding team and accessing talent	Recruitment support, entrepreneurs in residence, talent brokerage events
Venture support services	Targeted advisory for venture formation	Needs analysis, IP advice, finance and HR support, on demand services

Technical concepts explained

Phenotypic drug discovery:A discovery approach that looks for compounds that change cellular or tissue phenotypes in desired ways rather than targeting a single molecular pathway. When combined with patient derived organoids and machine learning image analysis it can reveal candidate compounds that produce beneficial effects in a more physiologically relevant model than standard cell lines.

Patient derived organoids (PDOs):Three dimensional cell cultures grown from a patient's tumour tissue. PDOs can preserve features of the original tumour and are considered more representative models for testing drug responses than conventional two dimensional cell cultures.

Collaborative awareness in agent collectives:A design objective where multiple minimal agents maintain shared information about each others' state and the environment to coordinate behaviour. Success typically requires efficient learning algorithms that can run on resource constrained agents and adapt over time.

Lifelong and evolutionary learning:Learning paradigms where models continue to adapt after initial training. Lifelong learning focuses on incremental updates without forgetting earlier knowledge. Evolutionary learning refers to algorithms that evolve network structure or parameters over generations to improve performance or adapt to new tasks.

Context and a measured view

Events like Tech Demo Days play a useful role in shifting the focus of research teams toward market signals. Demo days compress critical feedback cycles into a single session where teams practice pitching and receive targeted criticism. However this kind of intervention is only one part of a longer and risk filled path to successful commercialisation. Technical maturity, reproducible results, regulatory pathways, intellectual property clarity and follow on funding are all essential and often time consuming steps that a demo day cannot substitute.

The EIC programme logic is to reduce these risks through staged support but outcomes vary. Early validation of customers and business models remains a key gating item. Teams that receive positive feedback still face the hard work of demonstrating traction, building a team with complementary skills and securing investment for scaling.

Programme status and outlook:According to the EIC Tech to Market information pages the T2M programme was paused and scheduled to resume activities in 2026. That means new calls for experts and entrepreneurs in residence were closed as of late 2024 and stakeholders should monitor the official EIC pages for reopening dates and the precise services that will be offered on resumption.

How teams can make the most of Tech Demo Days

Based on the experiences shared during the event and common practice in EU innovation support, early stage teams should treat a Tech Demo Day as an opportunity to do three things well. First, use expert feedback to form a short list of testable assumptions to validate after the event. Second, build a clear, concise value proposition tailored to a non technical audience. Third, pursue follow up meetings with potential partners, mentors and investors identified during the event to convert interest into deeper due diligence.

Organisers of EIC programmes and panel experts can accelerate impact when they combine pitched feedback with follow up matchmaking and funded experiments that help projects prove critical technical and market hypotheses.

Further information and help

Teams interested in the EIC T2M Venture Building Programme can contact the EIC Community helpdesk and select the relevant Programme subject. Keep in mind programme availability may change and the T2M programme was slated to pause until 2026. For up to date details consult the official EIC and European Commission websites and the EIC Community contact pages.

This article reflects participant and expert comments reported around the Tech Demo Day. It aims to provide informed context and practical notes for innovators and stakeholders. It should not be read as an official position of the European Commission or any other body.

EIC Coaching Corner: How coaching helped Spanish medtech startups Idoven and mjn‑neuro sharpen commercialisation and investor outreach

2023-01-30Read Now