Eight Irish Start-Ups and SMEs to benefit from over €31m in Horizon 2020 funding

The European Commission today announced that 72 European start-ups and SMEs will be awarded €314m in funding to support the development of their innovations and the scaling of their companies. The budget for this call was increased by the Commission to ensure many Coronavirus relevant innovations were supported in addition to other thematic areas.

Eight Irish companies have secured over 10% of the funding allocated under this call and have been awarded grant and equity funding totalling over €31m.

Among the successful applicants are seven Enterprise Ireland clients including; Kite Medical, OneProjects Design Innovation, Provizio, Remedy Biologics, Kastus Technologies, SiriusXT and Aquila Biosciences.

Ireland ranked second, jointly with France and Denmark after the Netherlands in terms of the number of companies awarded funding.

The EIC Accelerator pilot supports high risk, high potential SMEs and innovators to help them develop and bring onto the market new innovative products, services and business models that could drive economic growth. All grant and equity awards are subject to the completion of grant and investment agreements.

Speaking following today’s announcement, Garrett Murray, National Director for Horizon 2020 at Enterprise Ireland said: “Today’s announcement is a great success for Ireland and is testament to the research and innovation capability of Irish companies and the vibrancy of the Irish high potential start-up and commercialisation ecosystem. This announcement provides significant funding to support these companies to bring their innovations to market and achieve their global ambition.

“To date, Irish companies and researchers have been awarded in excess of €907m in funding under Horizon 2020. There continue to be many opportunities for Irish enterprises and researchers under the EIC and across the Horizon 2020 Programme, including calls for proposals under the European Green Deal, worth circa €1bn that will be issued in the autumn.”

In October, the EIC Accelerator call for applications will have a focus on female entrepreneurship where should the first-round evaluation show that a minimum of 25 per cent of companies selected for the final-stage interviews are not led by women, additional interviews will be planned.

Following today’s announcement, Joan Fitzpatrick CEO of Kite Medical stated: “This funding from the European Commission will allow Kite Medical to further develop the KITE system for the detection of kidney reflux to progress into a clinical study. The funding will also support an additional six jobs at the company in technical, quality, regulatory, and clinical roles and establish our market launch strategy. The project outcomes will facilitate fundraising to support our commercialisation plan”.

Daniel Crowley, CEO and co-founder of Remedy Biologics added: “Remedy Bio’s unique advantage is in the discovery of immune biology to fight disease with unmatched precision in areas such as cancer, immune disorders, and infectious disease. We greatly welcome the EIC’s support for our programme to develop a long-term pandemic response platform to protect Europe from future pandemics, as well as enabling the development of our advanced passive therapy for Covid-19″.

Enterprise Ireland encourages all Irish researchers and innovators to look at the remaining opportunities under the Programme and to contact their National Contact Points in Enterprise Ireland and across the Horizon 2020 national support network for information, guidance and expert support in evaluating opportunities and making applications.