The fully-fledged EIC was launched March 2021 under Horizon Europe and is incorporated within the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA).
[1] Its goal is to aid researchers, start-ups and SMEs bring their innovations to market by providing funding, networking and partnership opportunities, and business acceleration services.
[2] The EIC has a budget of €10.1 billion to support innovations throughout the lifecycle from early stage research, to proof of concept, technology transfer, and the financing and scale up of start-ups and SMEs.
These funding schemes were brought together in single work programme to provide direct support to innovators throughout Europe.
The EIC Accelerator supports individual Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), in particular start-ups and spinout companies to develop and scale up game-changing innovations, from TRL5 to market deployment and scale-up.