The EU Unicorns Group discuss with EU Commissioner Mariya Gabriel how to build a new generation of European champions
Today, the EU Unicorns Group had a new and very fruitful meeting with the EU Commissioner for Innovation Mariya Gabriel. Skeleton was represented by the Head of Communications and Policy Arnaud Castaignet who, as head of the secretariat, was moderating the discussion.
Commissioner Gabriel explained the excellent work done by the services of the Commission since the first meeting. When the group submitted the EUNextGen report in Spring 2021, the unicorns and tech champions proposed four overall directions for a stronger European innovation ecosystem, each with concrete flagship initiatives:
- Tech sovereignty: EU Tech Sovereignty Fund
- Green transition: European Green Tech Fund
- Deep tech leadership:
- PPI fund to provide incentives to European public sector procurers to buy early-stage innovations;
- More EIC and EIT financing of deep tech startups;
- Use Battery Alliance as blueprint for other deep tech fields
- Innovation cohesion: support innovation territorial cohesion through digitalisation, training and innovation-friendly regulatory framework
The EU Unicorns Group was particularly delighted to hear from Commissioner Gabriel many concrete new actions have been taken by the European Commission and had been triggered by the EU Unicorns Group.
Regarding the EU Tech Sovereignty Fund, Commissioner Gabriel reminded the 2 key criterias for execution: starting quickly and getting private money leveraged by public investment. She underlined EU Members States have agreed on February 9th to launch the pan-European Scale-up Initiative, which aims to finance promising companies in their crucial, late-stage development. The EIB Group will be tasked by a specific mandate - the European Tech Champions Initiative – to manage a fund of fund structure designed to invest in European technology companies The EIB Group will initially commit up to €500 million in aggregate resources.
Regarding the Green Tech fund, the approach will be different and will focus on European regions and their strategy for sustainability. More details should follow in the coming months.
On deep tech leadership, the European Commission has been moving very quickly. The Commission adopted last week the 2022 work programme of the European Innovation Council. It opens funding opportunities worth over €1.7 billion in 2022 for breakthrough innovators to scale up and create new markets, for example in quantum computing, new generation batteries and gene therapy. The 2022 work programme includes several novelties, such as a new EIC Scale-Up 100 initiative to identify 100 promising deep tech EU companies that have the potential to become unicorns (with valuation of over €1 billion), and the EIC Accelerator that will allow companies working on technologies of strategic European interest to apply for EIC investments of more than €15 million.
Last but not the least, territorial cohesion is also going to be addressed, through several initiatives, including widening the scope of the new Horizon programme.
Overall, Skeleton Technologies is particularly satisfied that scale-ups and deep tech are two of the key priorities for both the group and the European Commission.
During the discussion, Aude Guo from Innovafeed emphasized the need for a strong support for deep tech companies involved in industrial innovation and technology. She raised the issue that not enough VCs and private investors understand the value of deep tech at the moment. Mate Rimac from Rimac Automobili explained how the interest from investors in industrial unicorns has been greatly increasing in recent years and underlined the very positive interactions the EU Unicorns Group had with the European Commission. Like Skeleton, Rimac Automobili is a member of the European Battery Innovation IPCEI. Juan de Antonio from Cabify said Europe should be aiming for more decacorns, and suggested improvements to be made for more start-ups to go to public market in Europe. Frederic Mazzella from Blablacar raised the topic of hiring talents, and Radoslav Georgiev from GTM Hub underlined the importance of closely collaborating with the EIC. Skeleton’s CEO Taavi Madiberk is himself a Board Member of the EIC.
The group received very positive answers from Commissioner Gabriel and is very satisfied by the close cooperation with the Commission. All participants agreed to meet again in May. In the meantime, the work of the EU Unicorns Group will continue at sherpa-level, and members will discuss the possibility to enlarge the group and initiative new internal working groups to keep producing ideas and contributing to the development of Europe’s innovation ecosystem.
