EIC STEP Scale up

EIC STEP Scale-up is a fund­ing pro­gramme that offers start-ups and SMEs invest­ments of between €10 mil­lion and €30 mil­lion as co-invest­ments in lar­ger fin­an­cing rounds. The aim is to pro­mote the scal­ing up of ground­break­ing innov­a­tions in the fields of digit­al tech­no­lo­gies, clean tech­no­lo­gies and biotechnology.

The fol­low­ing entit­ies are eli­gible to apply for EIC STEP Scale-up funding:

• A single SME or small mid-cap com­pany (with up to 499 employ­ees) based in a Mem­ber State or asso­ci­ated country.
• An investor may sub­mit a pro­pos­al on behalf of an eli­gible SME or small mid-cap com­pany as defined above.

EIC STEP is aimed at com­pan­ies seek­ing lar­ger fin­an­cing rounds in the range of €50 – 150 mil­lion. Teams apply­ing for STEP must demon­strate ini­tial mar­ket interest from a qual­i­fied investor cov­er­ing at least 20% of the total planned fin­an­cing round.

EUR 300 mil­lion has been ear­marked for EIC STEP scale up for 2025, with an expec­ted increase to EUR 900 mil­lion for the peri­od from 2025 to 2027.

The applic­a­tion pro­cess is a two-stage process.