EIC Accelerator and EIC Fund Investment Statistics: Grant Distribution, Equity Commitments, Funding Gaps, and Leverage by Sector

The EIC Accelerator does not just select startups — it disburses capital across two instruments simultaneously: a non-dilutive EC grant and a direct equity investment through an IC-approved fund manager. This dataset covers 772 selected companies from cohort years 2021 to 2025, tracking every stage of the capital delivery chain from application to final payout.

The aggregate picture is significant: €1,776M in EC grants disbursed, €1,085M in equity paid out, and a combined capital total of €2,861M. But the headline figures conceal wide variation across sectors, cohort years, and individual companies. Some companies received every cent of IC-approved equity — others received nothing despite formal IC approval years ago.

Source: EISMEA. The dataset covers 772 EIC Accelerator selected companies from cohort years 2021–2025, tracking EC grant amounts and equity at each stage of the investment lifecycle: requested, IC-approved, committed, and paid out.

Executive Summary

Cohort Year Analysis

The five cohort years (2021–2025) vary considerably in size and equity maturity. The 2022 cohort is the largest at 208 companies, while 2025 is the smallest at 99. Average grant sizes have risen steadily from €2.27M in 2021 to €2.46M in 2024, reflecting a gradual drift toward the programme ceiling over time.

The equity paid rate — paid equity as a share of requested equity in each cohort — drops sharply in newer cohorts. The 2021 cohort shows 50.5%, the 2022 cohort 56.0%, but the 2024 cohort is only 13.3% and the 2025 cohort has barely started at 1.4%. This is primarily a time effect: equity disbursement through EIC Fund managers typically takes 18 to 36 months after IC approval.

Grant Distribution

The EC grant distribution is heavily skewed toward the maximum. The programme cap is approximately €2.5M, and 77.5% of companies (581 out of 750 grant-receiving companies) received grants at or above €2.4M. The median grant of €2.50M sits right at the ceiling rather than the centre of the distribution — an unusual statistical profile that indicates almost all selected companies are being funded to the programme limit.

Only 83 companies received grants below €2M, and just 18 received less than €1.5M. The minimum grant in the dataset is €0.87M. This compressed distribution has a practical implication: comparing companies purely on grant size is not very informative — the instrument has been standardised at near-maximum for the majority of recipients.

The grant histogram reinforces this point. The vast majority of the distribution is packed into the final bucket. There is no meaningful bell curve — the programme functions more like a binary: selected companies get roughly €2.4M–€2.5M, or they receive a smaller non-standard grant tied to specific programme constraints.

Sub-€2M Grants — Smallest Awards

83 companies received grants below €2M — well below the ~€2.5M cap. The smallest award in the dataset is €0.87M (AgriFood Company 1). These are not failed applications; they are selected companies whose grant size was constrained by project scope, partial eligibility, or programme-specific rules. The 20 smallest grants are listed below.

Equity Investment Ask Distribution

Across the 537 companies with an equity component, the total equity requested was €3,620.69M. The average ask was €6.74M with a median of €5.50M — significantly below the programme maximum of €15M, indicating that most companies are not targeting the ceiling. The standard deviation of €4.13M reflects a wide spread from the minimum of €0.75M to the maximum of €15.00M.

The equity ask bucket distribution shows that the largest single group — 34.1% of equity companies — falls in the €5–10M range. The €2–5M bucket is nearly as large at 33.9%. The €15M maximum was requested by 63 companies (11.7%), making it the most popular single ask size despite being the ceiling.

Equity Ask by Sector

Therapeutics & Drug Development companies request the highest average equity tickets at €8.75M, followed by Space, Aerospace & Aviation (€8.37M), Semiconductors, Photonics & Electronics (€8.06M), and Quantum Technologies (€7.16M). AI, Software, Data & Cybersecurity has the lowest average equity ask at €4.44M.

Equity Delivery Funnel

The equity instrument is where the programme shows its most significant structural gap. Of the €3,620.69M requested by 537 equity companies, IC approved €2,458.86M (67.9%). After that, conversion narrows further. €1,178.28M was committed (32.5% of requested), and €1,084.68M was actually paid out — representing 30.0% of the original equity ask.

The largest single drop is between IC approval and fund manager commitment: €1,280.59M (52.1%) of approved equity was not committed. This is not a rejection — it is a structural failure to convert a formal IC decision into a commercial transaction. This is the principal bottleneck in the EIC equity instrument and accounts for most of the €1,374.19M in approved equity that remains unpaid.

A further breakdown reveals the risk profile:

• 158 companies had IC equity approved but nothing committed (29.4% of equity companies)
• 41 companies are materially under-disbursed after commitment (paid below 99% of committed equity)
• 13 companies received more equity than IC formally approved — evidence of successful follow-on rounds

Paid vs Outstanding Equity

The following tables break the equity pool into paid and outstanding segments at each measurement level. Of IC-approved equity, 44.1% has been paid — the remaining 55.9% (€1,374.19M) is outstanding. Once equity is committed by a fund manager, however, the pay-out rate climbs to 92.1%, meaning the commitment step is the critical filter, not the final disbursement step.

Zero Equity Paid — by Cohort Year

Breaking the delivery gap down by cohort year reveals how much of it is explained by programme age versus structural failure. For the 2021 cohort — companies selected over four years ago — 39 of 99 equity companies (39.4%) have still received nothing. Given that 2021 is the oldest cohort and most equity payments for mature cohorts have already cleared, this remains a meaningful non-delivery signal rather than a simple timing lag.

For 2022 the unpaid-company share is 41.6%. Then the gap accelerates sharply for newer cohorts: 2023 sits at 60.6%, 2024 at 78.7%, and 2025 at 97.7%. Most of the 2024 and 2025 unpaid equity can still be attributed to the time lag in equity fund processes — but the baseline non-delivery rate established in 2021 and 2022 shows that the delivery gap does not disappear entirely with time.

Top 20 Companies by Outstanding Equity

363 companies have IC-approved equity that has not yet been fully paid — a total outstanding balance of €1,455.61M. The top 20 are shown below. The majority of entries at the top of the list have received nothing at all (shown as —) despite IC approval ranging up to €15M.

Blended Finance — No Equity Paid Yet (Top 25 by Ask)

336 blended and equity-only companies show €0 equity paid. The top 25 by equity ask are listed below. Several of these companies have had formal IC approval for multiple years. The variation in the "Approved" column — from €0 to €15M — shows that maximum equity requests can remain unpaid even after approval.

Partial Payment Stalls — Committed but Not Fully Paid

41 companies have equity that was formally committed by a fund manager but remains materially under-disbursed, with paid equity below 99% of the committed amount. The top 20 by gap size are shown below. The largest single gap is Therapeutics Company 1 (€10.00M unpaid of €35.00M committed). One row rounds to €0.00M paid while still showing 0.1% paid; there are no true 0.0% committed-but-unpaid cases.

Overperformers — Equity Paid Exceeds Approved

13 companies received more equity than IC formally approved. This indicates successful additional fundraising rounds beyond the EIC ticket — the IC approval unlocked a first tranche and the company subsequently raised further rounds tracked under the same record. Semiconductor Company 3, Quantum Company 7, and Quantum Company 1 each received exactly 2.00x their approved amount.

Sector Breakdown

Medical Devices, Diagnostics & Digital Health is the dominant sector by company count and grant volume: 195 companies (25.3% of the total), receiving €455.88M in grants. Therapeutics & Drug Development follows with 79 companies, while Clean Energy, Storage & Electrification has 74 companies.

The blended finance share varies widely by sector. Space, Aerospace & Aviation leads at 83.9%, followed closely by Quantum Technologies at 83.3% and Semiconductors, Photonics & Electronics at 80.9%. Medical Devices, Diagnostics & Digital Health is much larger in absolute terms but has a lower blended share at 55.9%.

Equity by Sector: Approval and Payout Rates

IC approval rates measure how much equity IC approved relative to what companies requested. Consumer, Media, Education & Assistive Tech has the highest sector approval rate at 89.8%, followed by Fintech, Identity, Commerce & Supply Chain at 87.4% and Quantum Technologies at 87.0%.

Payout rates tell a different story. Quantum Technologies has the strongest payout rate at 66.0%, followed by Fintech, Identity, Commerce & Supply Chain at 48.1% and Semiconductors, Photonics & Electronics at 41.3%. Climate, Carbon, Water & Circular Economy (10.8%) and AI, Software, Data & Cybersecurity (10.3%) remain at the low end.

Sector Payout Breadth: Companies Paid vs. Money Paid

The sector payout rate above is money-based: paid equity divided by requested equity. A separate breadth measure asks how many equity-batch companies in each sector received any EIC Fund payment at all. Across the 537 blended-finance and equity-only companies, 201 received at least one equity payment (37.4%). Grant-first rows with later equity payments are excluded from this completion-rate view.

Quantum Technologies is the strongest sector on both measures: 14 of 26 equity-batch companies received a payment, and 66.0% of requested equity has been paid. At the other end, AI, Software, Data & Cybersecurity has only 3 of 16 companies paid (18.8%) and a 10.3% money-paid rate. Climate, Carbon, Water & Circular Economy and Built Environment show the clearest breadth-depth gap: a meaningful share of companies received something, but the money delivered remains much lower.

The consistent gap between IC approval rates and payout rates confirms that the bottleneck is not at the evaluation stage — IC is approving equity across all sectors. The problem is in the post-approval delivery chain, which is managed by EIC Fund managers rather than EISMEA directly.

Equity Leverage: Grant vs. EIC Equity Ask

The EIC Accelerator blended finance track combines two public instruments: a non-dilutive EC grant and a direct equity investment through the EIC Fund. The ask-based leverage ratio — EIC equity requested divided by EC grant — averages 2.76x across all blended companies. Every €1 of EIC grant was associated with a €2.76 EIC equity ask.

The ratio has increased over time. The 2021 cohort showed 2.57x, dropping slightly to 2.46x in 2022, then rising to 2.86x in 2023 and reaching a peak of 3.25x in 2024. The 2025 cohort returns to 2.57x, though this is based on a still-incomplete cohort. This upward trend suggests that companies entering the programme in later years are requesting proportionally larger EIC equity investments relative to their grant.

However, the actual paid multiplier — equity paid out divided by total grants disbursed — is only 0.61x. For every €1 of public grant, only €0.61 in EIC equity has been paid to companies so far. If all IC-approved equity were eventually paid, the multiplier would reach 1.38x. If all requested equity were paid, it would reach 2.04x. The delta between ask-based and paid-based leverage is the clearest single metric of the equity delivery gap.

At sector level, Therapeutics & Drug Development achieves the highest average paid equity / grant ratio at 2.99x, followed by Quantum Technologies (2.70x) and Semiconductors, Photonics & Electronics (2.49x). Climate, Carbon, Water & Circular Economy sits below 1x at 0.89x.

Equity Fulfilment: What Companies Actually Received

Per-company equity fulfilment — the ratio of equity paid to equity approved — shows how individual companies fared once their IC approval was in place. The average fulfilment rate is 68.8%, meaning the typical company received about two-thirds of its IC-approved equity. The median is 67.0%, suggesting a relatively symmetric distribution rather than one pulled by a few outliers. Using the audit's ≥99% near-full threshold, 70 of 235 approved-equity companies are effectively fully paid; the exact 100%+ chart bucket contains 30 companies (12.8%).

The sector-level breakdown reveals that Communications, Networks & Cloud Infrastructure has the highest average fulfilment rate at 103.1%, followed by Fintech, Identity, Commerce & Supply Chain at 100.0% and Quantum Technologies at 93.8%. Climate, Carbon, Water & Circular Economy has the lowest average fulfilment rate at 47.0%.

Thirteen companies received more equity than IC approved — their fulfilment rates exceed 101%. These are overperformers who raised additional rounds beyond their EIC ticket. The group collectively received €197.33M against an approved base of €115.90M — an excess of €81.43M that represents follow-on capital attracted after the initial IC approval.

Top Capital Recipients

The highest total capital recipients are those that combined a near-maximum grant with exceptional equity execution. Semiconductor Company 3 (Semiconductor Project 3) and Quantum Company 1 (Quantum Project 1) both cleared €32M in total capital — more than twice the €15M IC equity ceiling — by raising follow-on rounds beyond the formal IC approval. Semiconductor Company 7 reached €30M total. These are the companies where the EIC blended finance model produced its intended multiplier effect at full scale.

Below the top three, the next group clusters around the €17.5M level — companies that received a near-maximum grant (€2.50M) and the full IC equity ceiling (€15.00M). These 43 "maximum ticket" companies represent the programme ceiling on both instruments simultaneously. Their equity payout performance varies widely: some have received the full amount; others remain at €0 paid despite formal IC approval.

Top 15 Companies by Equity Leverage (Paid Equity / Grant)

Equity leverage — the ratio of EIC equity paid out to EC grant received — measures how much EIC equity investment was delivered per euro of grant at the individual company level. Quantum Company 1 (12.01x) and Semiconductor Company 3 (12.00x) top the list, both having raised nearly twelve times their €2.5M grant in equity. Semiconductor Company 7 follows at 11.00x. The top 15 all sit between 5.92x and 12.01x, and all received a near-maximum grant — the variation is almost entirely driven by equity paid.

Top 15 Companies by Equity Paid Out

The absolute equity disbursement ranking closely mirrors the leverage ranking because nearly all top recipients received near-identical grants (~€2.50M). The top four — Semiconductor Company 3, Quantum Company 1, Semiconductor Company 7, and Therapeutics Company 1 — are separated from the rest by a significant gap: the fifth highest recipient (Therapeutics Company 11 at €18.51M) received less than two-thirds of the leader. The sixth through fifteenth positions are essentially tied at the €15M ceiling, reflecting a cluster of companies that achieved full IC equity payout.

43 Maximum Ticket Companies (≥€2.49M Grant + ≥€15M Equity Ask)

43 companies requested the full programme ceiling on both instruments simultaneously — a near-maximum grant (≥€2.49M) and the full €15M equity ask. These are the companies that committed to the largest possible ask across both instruments. Medical Devices, Diagnostics & Digital Health accounts for the largest share of this group, followed by Therapeutics & Drug Development, then Semiconductors, Clean Energy, and Space/Aerospace.

22 Equity-Only Companies (€0 Grant)

22 companies in the dataset received pure equity with no EC grant component. Cross-referencing against CORDIS confirms that 21 of the 22 had already received a prior EIC grant — under either the H2020 SME Instrument (2017–2020) or the Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator (2021–2022) — making them ineligible for a second EC grant. The 22 fall into three groups: nine were originally announced as blended finance but had their grant stripped in the final data (eight due to prior SME Instrument eligibility, one with no confirmed prior grant); five returned for equity after a prior Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator grant; and eight held a prior H2020 SME Instrument grant without a blended finance announcement. Of the 22, three have received their full equity payment, eight have received partial payments, and eleven have received nothing.

Equity-Only Companies — Prior Grant History

Cross-referencing all 22 equity-only entries against CORDIS and EISMEA data confirms prior grant history for 21 of 22 companies. Group A: originally announced as blended finance, grant stripped in final data. Group B: equity-only entry after a prior Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator grant. Group C: equity-only entry after a prior H2020 SME Instrument grant.

Country Distribution

The country distribution is led by Germany with 121 companies (15.7%), followed by France with 115 (14.9%), the Netherlands with 84 (10.9%), and Spain with 68 (8.8%). Sweden, Israel, Finland, Denmark, and Italy make up the next largest groups in the table.

EIC Accelerator and EIC STEP Scale-Up Overlaps

Eight companies in the dataset subsequently won EIC STEP Scale-Up investments, a separate EIC Fund programme providing €10–30M equity tickets to help companies raise rounds of €50–150M or more. All eight had already received EIC Accelerator equity before their STEP selection. The EIC Accelerator paid figures below reflect amounts disbursed before the STEP announcements. Across all 26 unique STEP Scale-Up winners, only 2 payments have been publicly confirmed as disbursed so far; the remainder are selected but pending due diligence and disbursement.

¹ This footnote is hidden to obscure the identity of the company.

Key Findings

1. Grant distribution is nearly uniform at the ceiling. 77.5% of companies received ≥ €2.4M, and the median sits at the cap. The grant instrument is effectively standardised.
2. Equity conversion is the programme's defining structural challenge. 29.4% of equity companies have IC approval but nothing committed. The approved-to-committed conversion rate is 47.9%.
3. Time is the dominant variable for equity payout. The 2021 cohort (50.5% paid rate) vs the 2024 cohort (13.3%) shows that most of the outstanding equity will eventually be disbursed as older cohorts mature — but newer cohorts face a multi-year wait.
4. Therapeutics & Drug Development companies achieve the highest paid equity / grant ratio. Average ratio of 2.99x makes this the sector with the strongest delivered equity leverage in the updated report.
5. Space, Aerospace & Aviation shows the highest blended finance uptake (83.9%), narrowly ahead of Quantum Technologies (83.3%) and Semiconductors, Photonics & Electronics (80.9%).
6. The actual public money multiplier is 0.61x today, not 2.04x. The leverage ratio most commonly cited by the programme reflects equity asks, not equity paid.
7. 13 companies exceed their IC-approved equity through follow-on rounds. These overperformers provide the headline leverage numbers but represent a small fraction of the 537 equity companies.
8. Medical Devices, Diagnostics & Digital Health dominates by volume with 195 companies and €455.88M in grants, but its 32.0% payout rate and 1.62x average delivered leverage are not sector outliers.