European Innovation Council - Pathfinder

The EIC Pathfinder Open can support an ambitious vision for radically new technology, with potential to create new markets and/or to address global challenges. EIC Pathfinder Open will support early stage development of such future technologies (e.g. various activities at low Technology Readiness Levels 1-4), based on high-risk/high-gain science-towards-technology breakthrough research (including ‘deep-tech’). This research must provide the foundations of the technology you are envisioning.

EIC Pathfinder Open may support your work, especially if it is highly risky: you may set out to try things that will not work; you may be faced with questions that nobody knows the answer to yet; you may realise that there are many aspects of the problem that you do not master. On the contrary, if the path you want to follow is incremental by nature or known, EIC Pathfinder Open will not support you.

Before applying you should verify that your proposal meets all the following essential characteristics (‘Gatekeepers’):

• Convincing long-term vision of a radically new technology that has the potential to have a transformative positive effect to our economy and society.
• Concrete, novel and ambitious science-towards-technology breakthrough, providing advancement towards the envisioned technology.
• High-risk/high-gain research approach and methodology, with concrete and plausible objectives.

The overall objective of the EIC Pathfinder for advanced research is to develop the scientific basis to underpin breakthrough technologies. It provides support for the earliest stages of scientific, technological or deep-tech research and development. Pathfinder projects aim to build on new, cutting-edge directions in science and technology to disrupt a field and a market or create new opportunities by realising innovative technological solutions.

Learn more: https://eic.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-12/EIC%20Work%20Programme%202023_F%26T.pdf