EIC STEP Scale Up Results - July 2026: 6 Companies Selected, €97 Million in Equity, Success Rates and Full Winners Breakdown

The European Commission published a new set of EIC STEP Scale Up results on 28 July 2026, putting forward 6 companies for EIC Fund investment decisions after a competition that started with 24 submitted proposals and narrowed to 17 interview-stage companies. If negotiations and due diligence are completed successfully, the selected companies may receive a combined €97 million in equity financing, at between €10 million and €30 million per company.

This is the fifth public results batch for the scheme, and it is the most statistically unusual one so far. Proposal volume collapsed compared with the previous batch, but the overall success rate rose to the highest level ever recorded publicly for STEP Scale Up. At the same time, the average investment ticket fell again. The Commission also said that 6 additional companies were considered excellent but could not be selected because of the limitations of the available STEP budget, and that all 12 companies will receive the STEP Seal.

At a Glance

• Results published: 28 July 2026
• Call: EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up
• Submitted proposals: 24
• Interviewed companies: 17
• Companies put forward for investment decisions: 6
• Additional excellent but unfunded companies: 6
• Total public STEP Seal cohort in this batch: 12 companies
• Combined proposed EIC equity: €97 million
• Average proposed EIC ticket per selected company: €16.17 million
• Indicative EIC investment range per company: €10 million to €30 million
• Target financing round per company under the scheme: €50 million to €150 million or more
• 2026 STEP Scale Up budget: €300 million
• Countries represented among the 6 selected companies: 4
• Remaining 2026 batching dates listed by the EIC: 9 September 2026 and 25 November 2026

The Selection Funnel: What the Numbers Say

On the raw conversion numbers, this is the most forgiving public STEP batch to date. Both the proposal-to-interview step and the interview-to-investment step were easier than in the April 2026 round, and the overall success rate is the highest ever published for the scheme.

• Proposal-to-interview rate: 17 / 24 = 70.8%
• Interview-to-investment-recommendation rate: 6 / 17 = 35.3%
• Overall proposal success rate: 6 / 24 = 25.0%
• Total STEP Seal rate: 12 / 24 = 50.0%
• Excellent but unfunded rate: 6 / 24 = 25.0%

Translated into practical odds, this round produced 1 investment recommendation for every 4.0 submitted proposals and 1 selected company for every 2.83 interviews. For comparison, the April 2026 batch required 5.5 proposals and 3.5 interviews per selection. On a per-applicant basis, July 2026 was meaningfully easier.

The Volume Story Behind the Success Rate

The higher success rate should not be read as the EIC becoming more generous. It is mostly a denominator effect. Proposal volume dropped sharply.

• Proposals in April 2026: 44
• Proposals in July 2026: 24
• Change in proposal volume: -45.5%
• Rank by volume across the five public batches: second lowest, ahead only of the 19 proposals in June 2025

With fewer proposals competing for a call that still had budget available, both conversion steps loosened at once. The number of selected companies still fell from 8 to 6, so the absolute size of the winning cohort shrank even as the percentage odds improved.

The Seal Split Was Balanced for the First Time

In the two previous batches, excellent-but-unfunded companies heavily outnumbered funded ones. That is not what happened here.

• Companies publicly above the threshold for either funding or Seal: 12 / 24 = 50.0%
• Funded share within that above-threshold group: 6 / 12 = 50.0%
• Seal-only share within that above-threshold group: 6 / 12 = 50.0%
• Seal-only to funded ratio: 6 / 6 = 1.00

That ratio of 1.00 is the lowest since June 2025. In April 2026 it was 2.25, meaning more than two excellent unfunded companies for every funded one. A ratio of exactly 1.00 suggests that budget pressure at the final stage was materially lower in this batch than in the two previous rounds, which is consistent with the smaller applicant pool.

There is also an implied interview-stage metric. If the 6 additional excellent companies came from the same interviewed pool, then 12 of the 17 interviewed companies left the process with either an investment recommendation or a STEP Seal.

• Implied interview-stage rate for funding or STEP Seal: 12 / 17 = 70.6%
• Implied interviewed companies not reaching either public outcome: 5 / 17 = 29.4%

This is a notably weaker signal than April 2026, where the implied figure was 92.9%. In other words, reaching the interview stage in July 2026 was easier, but it also carried less predictive weight. Roughly three in ten interviewed companies in this batch appear to have left with neither funding nor a Seal, against roughly one in fourteen in April.

Funding Math: A Smaller Cohort and a Smaller Ticket

The headline is €97 million in proposed EIC equity for 6 companies. That is the smallest publicly announced batch envelope since June 2025, and the average ticket continued a clear downward trend.

• Average proposed EIC ticket: 97 / 6 = €16.17 million
• Theoretical maximum envelope if all 6 received the €30 million cap: 6 x 30 = €180 million
• Announced envelope as a share of that theoretical maximum: 97 / 180 = 53.9%
• Theoretical minimum envelope if all 6 received the €10 million floor: 6 x 10 = €60 million
• Share of the full 2026 STEP budget represented by this batch: 97 / 300 = 32.3%

The average ticket has now declined in each of the last three public batches for which a combined total was published:

• 12 June 2025: €90 million / 4 = €22.50 million
• 19 November 2025: €171 million / 8 = €21.38 million
• 27 April 2026: €146.5 million / 8 = €18.31 million
• 28 July 2026: €97 million / 6 = €16.17 million

That is a 11.7% decline against April 2026 and a 28.1% decline against the June 2025 peak. The per-company cap has not changed, so the trend points to the EIC Fund spreading a fixed annual envelope across more companies rather than concentrating it in fewer, larger positions.

The 2026 Budget Is Now Largely Committed

This is the second public batch charged against the €300 million 2026 STEP Scale Up budget, after the €146.5 million announced in April 2026. Reading the published headline amounts literally:

• Announced across the two 2026 batches so far: 146.5 + 97 = €243.5 million
• Share of the 2026 budget announced to date: 243.5 / 300 = 81.2%
• Implied remaining 2026 budget: €56.5 million
• Companies that remaining amount could cover at this batch's average ticket: 56.5 / 16.17 = approximately 3
• Companies that remaining amount could cover at the €10 million floor: 56.5 / 10 = at most 5

This matters because two batching dates remain in 2026: 9 September 2026 and 25 November 2026. If the announced amounts are treated as committed, those two remaining rounds would be competing for well under a fifth of the annual envelope. Applicants targeting the September or November batches should assume tighter capital availability than in either 2026 round announced so far, and therefore a higher probability of a Seal-only outcome even with a strong proposal. This calculation assumes the published headline figures convert fully into commitments; actual disbursement depends on due diligence and negotiation outcomes, which the EIC does not publish per batch.

Leverage: What the Scheme Expects the Market to Add

The STEP Scale Up scheme is designed to help companies raise rounds of €50 million to €150 million or more. Applied to a cohort of 6, that implies:

• Minimum aggregate target financing across the 6 winners: 6 x 50 = €300 million
• Upper-end aggregate target financing at €150 million each: 6 x 150 = €900 million
• Implied non-EIC capital required at the minimum aggregate target: 300 - 97 = €203 million
• Implied non-EIC capital required at the upper-end aggregate target: 900 - 97 = €803 million

The average announced EIC ticket in this batch represents about 32.3% of a €50 million round and about 10.8% of a €150 million round. That is squarely in line with the STEP positioning as anchor capital rather than full-round capital.

The official STEP page also requires a pre-commitment from a single qualified investor representing at least 20% of the total target round, and at least 3 to 5 times the EIC investment. At the minimum target-round scenario of €50 million per company, that implies at least €10 million in pre-committed investor backing per company, or at least €60 million in aggregate across this 6-company cohort, before the EIC money is counted.

How This Batch Compares With Earlier Public STEP Scale Up Rounds

July 2026 is the fifth public results cohort. It sets a new high for overall success rate and a new low for average ticket size, while ranking second-lowest on both proposal volume and cohort size.

The comparative conclusions worth highlighting:

• Best-ever headline odds: the 25.0% overall success rate is the highest of any public batch, beating the previous best of 21.1% from June 2025.
• Best-ever proposal-to-interview rate: at 70.8%, this batch narrowly edges out the 70.6% recorded in November 2025.
• Second-best interview conversion: 35.3%, behind only the anomalous 80.0% of the tiny June 2025 batch.
• Smallest average ticket: €16.17 million, the lowest of any batch with a published total.
• Least budget-constrained final stage: the Seal-only to funded ratio of 1.00 is the lowest since June 2025.

Combining all five public batches, the disclosed STEP Scale Up pipeline now totals 172 proposals, 108 interviews, and 33 selected companies, alongside 82 total public STEP Seal outcomes including selected companies. That yields a multi-batch overall selection rate of 19.2% (33 / 172), a cumulative proposal-to-interview rate of 62.8% (108 / 172), a cumulative interview conversion rate of 30.6% (33 / 108), and a cumulative Seal rate of 47.7% (82 / 172).

Country Concentration in the July 2026 Cohort

The six selected companies span only four countries, and France alone accounts for half the cohort. This is the most geographically concentrated public STEP batch so far.

For context, the highest single-country share in the April 2026 batch was 25.0%, split between Germany and the Denmark/Greenland label. A 50.0% single-country share is double that. It is also worth noting that Estonia's presence keeps a smaller ecosystem represented in a scheme that is otherwise dominated by the largest European economies.

Full Winners Breakdown

Below is a company-by-company view of the July 2026 selected cohort, covering what each company does, why it fits the STEP mandate, and what its public track record shows.

1) Cailabs (France)

The EIC describes Cailabs as building the ground systems that make laser communications deployable. The company's public positioning is broader than that single application: it presents itself as a light-shaping specialist working across space, defence, industrial lasers and fibre networks.

• Capital raised to date: the company's public site states €100 million raised
• Patent families: the site reports more than 29
• Space-to-Earth link performance: more than 10 Gbps space-to-Earth communication
• Industrial track record: more than 20 industrial processes enhanced and more than 8,000 legacy fibre links upgraded
• Footprint: offices in Rennes and Paris (France) and Arlington, Virginia (United States)
• Product lines: optical ground stations and line-of-sight optical terminals, optronics and directed energy applications, laser welding and additive manufacturing, and the AROONA, ONEMODE and PROTEUS fibre-network products
• Industrial expansion: the company's newsroom describes a flagship industrial project in Rennes to meet optical ground station demand

Cailabs is a good illustration of why STEP backs companies like this. Optical ground stations are the physical bottleneck for high-throughput satellite laser communications, which makes the company an infrastructure supplier to European space sovereignty rather than a single-product vendor.

2) Cylib (Germany)

The EIC summarises Cylib as transforming end-of-life batteries into critical raw materials. Its public materials make the critical-raw-materials angle explicit and quantitative.

• Origin: the company states it was born at RWTH Aachen University
• Recycling efficiency: 90%
• Carbon footprint: the company reports the same material at an 80% reduced carbon footprint versus raw material extraction, verified by an external lifecycle assessment in 2023
• Process: holistic recovery of all elements in lithium-ion batteries, including proprietary water-based lithium and graphite recovery that the company says drastically minimises chemical use
• Energy: the company states it powers every step of production with 100% renewable electricity
• Feedstocks: end-of-life batteries, production scraps, and black mass, in an end-to-end chain from discharging to refined materials

Cylib is the clearest critical-raw-materials case in this cohort. It fits the STEP logic of reducing strategic dependencies on imported battery inputs by recovering them domestically.

3) Paebbl (The Netherlands)

The EIC describes Paebbl as turning CO₂ into future-proof building materials. This places it in the carbon-utilisation segment of the clean and resource-efficient technologies scope, where captured CO₂ becomes a mineral input for construction products rather than a stored waste stream.

Construction materials are one of the hardest industrial sectors to decarbonise, and they are also a very large volume market. That combination is exactly the profile STEP targets: a technology whose climate relevance only materialises at industrial scale, which in turn requires the kind of large financing round the scheme is designed to anchor.

4) SiPearl (France)

The EIC describes SiPearl as designing high-performance central processing units (CPUs) for sovereign data centres and accelerated computing. This is the most explicitly sovereignty-driven selection in the batch.

The official STEP Scale Up programme page names quantum technologies and semiconductors as particular focus areas for the scheme. A European high-performance CPU designer sits directly on that priority line. It is also a capital-intensive category by nature, since silicon design and tape-out cycles consume large amounts of money before any revenue arrives, which makes it a natural fit for a €10 million to €30 million anchor investment inside a much larger round.

5) Skeleton Technologies Group (Estonia)

The EIC describes Skeleton Technologies Group as developing rack-to-grid power systems engineered for the demands of next-generation AI compute infrastructure. That framing is significant: it positions the company not as a generic energy storage supplier, but as a component of the AI data centre buildout.

Skeleton is also the only Estonian company in this cohort and the only one from a smaller European innovation ecosystem, which makes it a useful counterexample to the argument that STEP funding flows only to the largest member states.

6) Vsora (France)

The EIC describes Vsora as delivering ultra-high-performance AI inference solutions for both data centers and edge deployments. Together with SiPearl, it gives this batch two French semiconductor and AI silicon positions.

Inference silicon is currently one of the most contested categories in global technology, and it is dominated by non-European suppliers. Backing a European inference player is therefore a direct strategic-dependency play rather than a general innovation grant, which is consistent with how the STEP instrument is framed.

Technology Mix: The AI Compute Stack Dominates

The July 2026 cohort is unusually thematically tight. Half of it maps onto a single value chain.

• AI compute infrastructure (silicon and power): 3 of 6 winners (50.0%) - SiPearl, Vsora and Skeleton Technologies Group
• Semiconductors and AI silicon specifically: 2 of 6 winners (33.3%) - SiPearl and Vsora
• Circular materials and CO₂ utilisation: 2 of 6 winners (33.3%) - Cylib and Paebbl
• Photonics and space-ground laser communications: 1 of 6 winners (16.7%) - Cailabs
• Biotechnology: 0 of 6 winners (0.0%)

Two observations follow. First, if SiPearl's CPUs, Vsora's inference engines and Skeleton's rack-to-grid power systems are read together, this batch effectively funds three different layers of the same European AI data centre stack: the processor, the accelerator and the power delivery. That is a coherent industrial-policy pattern, not a coincidence of six independent decisions.

Second, biotechnology is entirely absent, despite being one of the three named scopes of the STEP Scale Up call alongside digital and deep tech and clean technologies. April 2026 included two life-science or bioprocessing companies. Biotech applicants should treat this as a single-batch data point rather than a policy shift, but it is worth watching across the September and November rounds.

What Applicants Should Learn From This Round

1) Headline success rates move with volume, not just with quality

A 25.0% success rate looks like the scheme opening up. In reality proposal volume fell 45.5% and the cohort shrank from 8 companies to 6. The lesson is that STEP odds are strongly batch-dependent, and that batches with lower competition are structurally easier. Applicants who can choose their submission timing have a real, measurable lever here.

2) The remaining 2026 budget is the single biggest risk factor for the next two batches

With roughly €56.5 million implied to remain of the €300 million 2026 envelope and two batching dates left, the September and November rounds are the ones most likely to produce Seal-only outcomes for otherwise fundable companies. Anyone building a financing plan around a 2026 STEP investment should have a credible path that works if the outcome is a Seal rather than a cheque.

3) Strategic dependency reduction is now the dominant selection logic

Sovereign CPUs, European AI inference silicon, power systems for AI data centres, domestically recovered battery raw materials, CO₂-derived construction materials and optical ground stations for satellite communications. Every single company in this batch addresses a category where Europe currently depends on external suppliers. Technical excellence alone is not the story here; the common thread is reducing a specific, nameable European dependency.

4) Interview admission means less than it did last round

The implied 70.6% interview-stage rate for either funding or a Seal is well below the 92.9% implied in April 2026. Getting to interview remains necessary, but in this batch it was a considerably weaker predictor of a public positive outcome. Preparation for the jury interview itself carried more weight.

Raw Data

• Publication date: 28 July 2026
• Submitted proposals: 24
• Interviewed companies: 17
• Selected companies: 6
• Additional excellent companies receiving STEP Seal only: 6
• Total public STEP Seal recipients in the batch: 12
• Proposal-to-interview rate: 70.8%
• Interview-stage success rate: 35.3%
• Overall proposal success rate: 25.0%
• STEP Seal rate: 50.0%
• Funded share among the 12 public above-threshold companies: 50.0%
• Seal-only share among the 12 public above-threshold companies: 50.0%
• Unfunded excellent-to-funded ratio: 1.00
• Implied interview-stage rate for funding or Seal: 70.6%
• Combined proposed EIC investment: €97 million
• Average proposed investment per winner: €16.17 million
• Per-company investment range: €10 million to €30 million
• 2026 scheme budget: €300 million
• Share of annual budget represented by this batch: 32.3%
• Total announced across both 2026 batches: €243.5 million
• Share of the 2026 budget announced to date: 81.2%
• Implied remaining 2026 budget: €56.5 million
• Minimum aggregate target financing implied by 6 x €50 million rounds: €300 million
• Upper-end aggregate target financing implied by 6 x €150 million rounds: €900 million
• Remaining 2026 batching dates: 9 September 2026 and 25 November 2026