EIC announces eight companies set to receive €171 million of scale-up investments

The European Innovation Council (EIC) has announced the names of eight companies that will receive €171 million of equity investments through the EIC's Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up call.

The list, announced on 19/11/2025, includes three German companies, three from the Netherlands and two from France will receive between €10m and €30m aiming to leverage private co-investment and achieve financing rounds of €50 mto €150 or more.

The eight selected companies are:

• Aldoria (France) optimising and securing space operations;
• Focused Energy (Germany) dealing with laser-driven fusion;
• Leyden Laboratories (The Netherlands) working to free people from the threat of respiratory viruses;
• Marvel Fusion (Germany) building a laser-driven fusion power plant;
• Nexwafe (Germany) next generation of solar wafers;
• Qphox (The Netherlands) developing scalable, high-performance quantum processors;
• Quandela (France) photonic quantum computers;
• Smart Photonics (The Netherlands) - creating next-generation chips.

Out of 51 applicants, 36 companies were invited to interviews…