Brussels company awarded in most competitive EIC Accelerator funding programme

Last week the European Commission selected 74 innovative companies under the first 2022 European Innovation Council EIC Accelerator cut-off. They are set to receive up to €382 million of funding in a combination of grants and investments. The companies were selected from over 1000 start-ups and SMEs that submitted a full application for funding for the 23 March 2022 cut-off, of which 266 were interviewed by juries of experienced investors and entrepreneurs. The selected companies will each receive grants and/or equity investments, depending on their needs, up to €17.5 million.

The selected companies have a wide geographical spread spanning 18 countries. The Brussels based company Octave , a specialist in circular battery energy storage solutions was amongst the privileged companies to get selected. In a previous cut-off round Octave did not get selected, but at a second try they managed to refine their proposal and present their project idea in a convincing way to the jury. The NCP Brussels team was excited to help out in this process by offering proof reading and a jury pitch simulation to prepare Octave for the jury interview.

Maxime Snick, Co-founder & CEO of Octave

“We much appreciate the professional support we have received from the NCP Brussels during the entire application process. Their feedback and advice has been essential for the quality of our proposal and the positive outcome!”

Octave will now receive a grant of more than 1 million € in order to support their scale-up activities which will be further complemented by equity investments.

The March cut-off selection confirms the high demand for EIC equity investments with 61 of the 74 companies requesting equity investments or grant first option. In most cases, the companies will receive the grant financing within the next two to three months, while the finalisation of the equity investment is expected during the autumn.

Most of the companies invited to the jury interviews and who were not selected for funding, will be awarded a Seal of Excellence and access to services to help them find alternative sources of funding.

Background information

The EIC Accelerator Programme is part of the Horizon Europe Programme, Europe’s largest funding programme for research and innovation. The EIC supports disruptive and breakthrough innovation in Europe and offers start-ups and SME’s grants of up to €2.5 million combined with equity investments through the EIC Fund ranging from €0.5 to €15 million. In addition to financial support, all projects benefit from a range of Business Acceleration Services that provide access to leading expertise, corporates, investors and ecosystem actors. While there have been delays to funding companies selected in 2021, the EIC is rapidly catching up on this backlog and the new set of companies announced today are expected to receive their support much faster.

Companies can submit their ideas to the EIC Accelerator at any time. For ideas meeting the EIC criteria for excellence, impact and risk-level, companies are invited to prepare full applications to submit to one of the regular cut-off dates.

Since its launch in March 2021, over 6,000 start-ups and SMEs have sent their ideas and almost 3000 have submitted full applications. The companies announced today were among the 1093 who submitted to the first 2022 cut-off on 23 March, and join the 164 companies selected for funding by the EIC in 2021. The next cut-offs for full applications is 15 June and 7 October.

Related links

• Selected companies
• Submission statistics
• Update on the implementation process