New scale up investments under the EIC STEP Scale Up scheme and first investments disbursed
Published on: 03/12/2025
Proposed to receive a combined €171 million of equity investments, they will now go forward to the EIC Fund for investment decisions, subject to due diligence.
The EIC STEP Scale Up scheme provides investments of between €10 and €30 million (per company) aiming to leverage private co-investment and achieve financing rounds of €50 to €150 million or more. This addresses the market gap in such financing rounds which are critical for scaling breakthrough innovations in Europe.
Out of 51 companies that submitted their proposal, 36 were invited to interview with independent high-level experts. Eight of those have met all the criteria and are now put forward for investment decisions by the EIC Fund.
The selected companies cover a range of strategic technologies for Europe:
- Aldoria (France) – optimising and securing space operations;
- Focused Energy (Germany) - dealing with laser driven fusion;
- Leyden Laboratories (The Netherlands) - working to free people from the threat of respiratory viruses;
- Marvel Fusion (Germany) - building a laser-driven fusion power plant;
- Nexwafe (Germany) – next generation of solar wafers;
- Qphox (The Netherlands) - developing scalable, high-performance quantum processors;
- Quandela (France) – photonic quantum computers;
- Smart Photonics (The Netherlands) – creating next generation chips.
These eight companies, together with additional 21 companies that were also excellent, but not selected in this round due to the limitations of the available STEP budget, will all receive the STEP Seal. The Seal aims to facilitate access to complementary or alternative funding as well as to EIC Business Acceleration Services.
More info here
First EIC Step Scale Up investments disbursed
The EIC Fund has finalised its first two equity investments under the EIC Step Scale Up scheme.
These first investments go to IQM Quantum Computers and Zadient Technologies, two pioneering European scale-ups that exemplify the ambition and excellence of the EIC portfolio.
More info here
