A too limited number of European startups are scaling-up. As high growth companies are the ones largely responsible for job creation and economic benefits, this is a missed opportunity. Create new markets and increase employement, growth and prosperity in Europe are the main purposes of EIC. Bpifrance, TechTour and Boston Consulting Group have been selected to lead the recently launched 1.5 million euros EIC Scaling Up project to support EIC beneficiaries in their growth phase to become sustainable global deep tech leaders.

As barriers are growing for high-risk deep tech innovators, they struggle to get required capital at the different stages of their lifecycle. Besides, Europe is grossly underleveraging its assets in terms of research, a fundamental requisite for deep tech success. That is what prevents the flourishing of European deep tech scene. Indeed, Europe keep staying behind the US and China, both in terms of funding and number of deep tech companies. While other EIC programs support deep tech endeavors at the seed and series A stages, little support was provided until now for startups with series B or C needs.

The EIC-Scaling Up Pilot: a new hope to find investments for deep tech companies?

The EIC-Scaling Up Pilot will create a blueprint for EIC deep tech growth companies to successfully scale and accelerate their investments and partnerships beyond series B.

It will be organized in four steps:

• Identify and select 30 companies that will receive acceleration services to guide their growth plan and ambitions.
• Produce a blueprint model for deep tech series B/C acceleration, to boost the companies’ growth and investment. The coaching will focus on talent acquisition, on favoring partnerships to promote growth, on introducing the company to investors and funding options and finally, on market access.
• Consortium members will leverage networks of investors, corporates, and innovation agencies to connect the 30 SMEs to over 300 contacts through the defined blueprint. This will lead to a successful Series B/C round or acquisition value, thus validating the EIC-Scaling Up blueprint. It is expected that more than 500 million euros will be raised by the supported companies, with over 200 connections with qualified investors.
• Establishing the accelerator as a label and promote the beneficiaries towards investors and buyers by sharing inspirational success stories of EIC deep tech companies on relevant media and press to inspire other entrepreneurs, policy makers and innovation agencies on the learnings of building and retaining world-scale deep tech companies & ecosystems.

The objective of this project would be the raise of thirty European success stories, by supporting the selected companies to become sustainable global deep tech leaders, as well as developing a well-tested EU model for scaling services to foster substantial growth of deep tech innovators. This exposure will increase their number and value of commercial deals, investments deals and Initial Public Offerings. The model, which will target companies aiming for series B/C funding, will complement existing EIC programs, to offer a continuum of support to EU startups from seed to series C.

All our information is coming from these two websites:

• EIC Scaling-up project: https://www.eicscalingup.eu/
• EIC: https://eic.ec.europa.eu/