The European Innovation Council has selected 30 new projects under the 2025 EIC Pathfinder Challenges Call for cutting edge research projects delivering breakthroughs in four strategic areas:
- Biotech for climate resilient crops and plant-based biomanufacturing,
- Generative-AI based agents to revolutionise medical diagnosis and treatment of cancer,
- Towards autonomous robot collectives delivering collaborative tasks in dynamic unstructured construction environments
- Waste-to-value devices – circular production of renewable fuels, chemicals, and materials.
The successful projects were chosen from 647 submitted eligible proposals and will receive around €118 million of EU funding (on average €3.93 million per project).
Participants predominantly come from higher education institutions (41%), private for-profit organisations (29%), and research organisations (24%).
Examples of selected projects:
- INPROBED – pioneers a paradigm shift in plant biotechnology by moving from conventional gene editing to precision promoter engineering. The project will develop a predictive promoter design platform for tomatoes, combining single-cell data revealing how genes are switched on and off in individual cells with deep learning to map and reprogramme gene regulatory elements. This approach aims to enhance crop resilience to heat, drought and nutrient limitations, while improving nutritional quality. The consortium brings together leading expertise in genomics, gene regulation, and crop science.
- LUMINA – introduces a groundbreaking methodology built upon physics-informed attention mechanisms, advancing dynamic intelligence for predictive precision in lung cancer care. LUMINA’s ambition is to fundamentally provide target groups (e.g., clinicians, patients and healthcare providers) with proactive, AI-empowered self-management tool and equip practitioners with a powerful decisional support system. It will be done within an open platform adaptable to multiple cancer types (e.g., colorectal, prostate, and stomach).
- SITEBOT – targets safer, faster and greener on-site building assembly by advancing autonomous robot collectives for timber-based construction. The project will develop a modular multi-robot platform, advanced AI-based perception and coordination systems, and certified human–robot collaboration frameworks. Its solutions will be validated in a lab-scale building demonstrator, with a strong focus on real-world deployment and industry uptake.
- PROPEL is developing a scalable and cost-efficient platform for producing protein-based materials and biocatalysts using synthetic cells. By combining advances in bottom-up synthetic biology, renewable building blocks, fermentation, and waste valorisation, the project aims to overcome current barriers that limit industrial protein production.
EIC Programme Managers played a central role in defining the Pathfinder Challenges. For each Challenge, they will actively build and manage a portfolio of projects exploring different perspectives, competing approaches or complementary aspects, with the aim of maximising impact.
Selected projects will receive not only grant funding, but also access to tailored coaching through the EIC Business Acceleration Services, as well as potential fast track access to the EIC Accelerator.
Next steps
All projects have been notified of the results and are now preparing their grant agreements. Funding will be dependent upon the signing of these agreements.
Background information
With its Pathfinder scheme, the EIC supports the exploration of bold ideas for radically new technologies. It welcomes high-risk/high gain and interdisciplinary cutting-edge science collaborations that underpin technological breakthroughs.
EIC Pathfinder supports grants of up to €4 million on early-stage development of future technologies (e.g. various activities at low Technology Readiness Levels 1-3), up to proof of concept. EIC Pathfinder projects benefit from interactions with EIC Programme Managers and can receive additional funding for testing the innovation potential of their research outputs or for working across projects for portfolio actions.
Promising results can receive substantial follow up funding to create a commercial venture through the EIC Transition scheme or use the EIC Accelerator Fast Track scheme to bring innovations to the market.
2026 funding opportunities
Apply for 2026 EIC Pathfinder Challenges Call by 28 October 2026) in the following areas:
- Advanced Materials for miniaturised energy harvesting systems,
- Biotechnology for healthy ageing,
- DeepRAP: deep reasoning, abstraction & planning towards trustworthy cognitive AI systems.