EIC Fund

The EIC Fund is the venture arm of the European Innovation Council, the European Union's innovation agency. It was set up in 2020 as a capital fund under private law, with the European Commission as its shareholder, and takes equity stakes in companies selected through the EIC Accelerator — the EU programme that pairs a grant with an equity investment in the same company.

That structure makes it unusual among European investors: deal flow comes from a public evaluation process rather than a partner network, and the fund almost always arrives alongside a grant rather than in a competitive priced round. It manages roughly €3.0b and is based in Luxembourg.

The portfolio is deep tech first. Health is the single largest sector, followed by energy and semiconductors, and the geographic centre of gravity sits in France, Germany and the Netherlands rather than in Europe's largest venture hubs. 2026 was its first significant listing year: IQM and Pasqal, both quantum computing companies, went public within months of each other.