Overview
Through its Corporate Partnership Programme, the European Innovation Council (EIC) is bridging the innovation and collaboration gap between Europe’s cutting-edge startups and established multinational corporations.
Since 2017, the programme has been fostering strategic partnerships between EIC-backed startups and corporations to accelerate the adoption of transformative deep tech solutions while enhancing the global competitiveness of European innovation ecosystems.
From 2017 to 2025, the Corporate Partnership Programme organised 72 Corporate Days and Multi-Corporate Days, facilitating 2,493 one-to-one meetings and 100+ successful business deals between large European corporations and EIC-backed innovative companies. These initiatives have involved over 100 corporate partners, including Galp, Vattenfall, Holcim, ABB, Airbus, BMW, CaixaBank, CommerzBank, Enel, Ferrovial, L’Oreal, Medtronic, Neste, Novo Nordisk, Roche, Saint-Gobain, Shell, Siemens Energy, Solvay or Telefonica, among others.
In the framework of the Programme, the EIC offers curated matchmaking activities tailored to facilitating impactful partnerships. From analysing corporate challenges and scouting startups to providing mentorship, facilitating matchmaking, and ensuring dealmaking success, the EIC is dedicated to supporting the EIC-backed startups and largest corporations throughout the corporate venturing journey.
What we offer
The European Innovation Council is open for new collaborations with the largest and most innovative corporations in Europe.
Selected corporations will have the opportunity to:
- Gain access to a pipeline of over 6,000 pre-selected and EIC-backed scaleups in Europe, covering all verticals including health, energy, quantum, sustainability.
- Present their challenges and select the most relevant EIC startups for future collaboration.
There are three different activity formats for the European Corporate Partnership Programme:
- EIC Corporate Days: Exclusive curated business acceleration service bridging the gap between EIC-backed scaleups and large firms.
- EIC Multi Corporate Days: Corporate Day involving several corporations focusing on sector-specific challenges and opportunities.
- Corporate Clients Capitalisation: Business acceleration service where the corporations act as intermediaries, facilitating the access for EIC beneficiaries to their commercial networks.
We are looking for large corporations with open innovation spirit, interested in collaborating with startups and scaleups and integrating deep tech solutions into their business offering.
Want to learn more and discover all opportunities? Dive deeper into our programme with our video playlist:
Criteria for the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme
In order to guarantee the highest impact for EIC-backed scaleups, the EIC looks specifically for:
Size and reach:
- Largest corporations in Europe (cumulative criteria):
- More than €1 bn turnover.
- More than 1000 employees worldwide.
- Presence in at least 10 EU27 Member States.
- Investment in startups-scaleups.
Alignment with the EIC Portfolio:
- Focus on the EIC portfolio needs. Main topics: Health and Biotech, Energy and Sustainability, and Digital and ICT.
Innovation and investment:
- Corporate investment and experience in Open Innovation, Corporate Venturing and/or Corporate Venture Capital (CVC).
To join the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme, the corporation will be asked to sign the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme Declaration of intent.
Please, watch the video EIC Corporate Partnership Programme-What’s in it for you? to have better understanding of what the programme is and how it can help your business.
Read our flagship report on corporate-startup collaboration
Our flagship report,"Unlocking Innovation through Corporate-Startup Collaboration – The EIC Corporate Partnership Programme", highlights how partnerships between innovative startups and large corporations are driving deep tech scale-up and industrial transformation in Europe.
Among the key findings:
- Effective collaboration is grounded in 4 essential pillars: strategic alignment, mutual commitment and value creation, skills, and early-stage experimentation (e.g. pilots and proofs-of-concept).
- The EIC CPP model proves more effective than traditional one-off innovation events, delivering consistent results through tailored and sustained engagement.
- In-person, single-corporate formats deliver the highest number of business deals, while online and multi-corporate formats increase reach and visibility.
- The programme achieved a 92% satisfaction rate among participating EIC companies, confirming its value in accelerating growth and partnerships.
The report also touches upon trends and emerging models of corporate-startup collaboration, brings forward best practices in corporate venturing and showcases real case studies of successful collaborations between EIC-backed companies and major corporations.
Get in touch
If you have any questions, please contact us through the EIC Community’s contact page with the subject 'EIC Corporate Partnership Programme'.