Grants

The DeepRAP challenge aims to significantly advance the Reasoning, Abstraction, and Planning (RAP) capabilities of AI systems to move beyond the limitations of traditional AI approaches. Projects funded are expected to achieve breakthroughs in trustworthy, human-centric cognitive AI by developing systems that exhibit provable trustworthiness, transparency, explainability, ethical alignment, and the power to generalise, reason, abstract, and plan in complex real-world settings. The challenge encourages innovative approaches, especially those inspired by interdisciplinary research, and mandates integration, benchmarking, and practical demonstrations across diverse domains. The objective is to position Europe as a leader in safe and trustworthy cognitive AI, supporting the AI Act and Europe's digital sovereignty.

This grant supports ambitious research and innovation for new generations of energetically autonomous systems by identifying and developing advanced materials for miniaturised energy harvesting modules and achieving TRL 4 for energetically autonomous systems. The challenge aims to create highly efficient, integrated energy harvesting devices, helping improve energy sustainability, environmental impact, and supporting the digital and green transition in Europe. Applications are expected to address advanced materials identification, device integration, performance benchmarking, and market potential for applications, such as diagnostics, smart cities, health monitoring, and industrial monitoring.

The grant aims to accelerate the development and uptake of clinically validated interventions targeting the root causes of multiple age-related morbidities. It supports the delivery of biotechnology-based interventions for healthy ageing, the implementation of personalised care based on molecular phenotyping, recommendations for regulatory pathways for addressing ageing, and improving citizen literacy on longevity.

The DeepRAP Challenge supports research and innovation in trustworthy cognitive AI, advancing scientific state-of-the-art and positioning Europe as a leader in human-centric, safe and explainable AI. Proposals should deliver cognitive AI systems capable of deep reasoning, abstraction, and planning, integrating provable trustworthiness mechanisms with alignment to ethical, legal, and societal standards (including the AI Act). Projects are expected to develop interoperable, application-driven AI systems, demonstrate these in real-world and simulated scenarios, create new methods for AI evaluation and certification, follow FAIR data principles, and collaborate within a portfolio to ensure coverage of capabilities, technological approaches, and use cases. The ultimate goal is to go beyond current deep learning and symbolic AI paradigms, exploring innovative methods inspired by neuroscience, biology, philosophy, and other fields, to achieve breakthroughs in abstraction, contextualisation, causality, and human-like cognitive functions.

This grant aims to foster the development of advanced materials for miniaturised energy harvesting modules, targeting the creation of energetically autonomous systems with significant improvements over the current state of the art. The anticipated impacts include new autonomous systems and services, enhanced sustainability of IoT and energy consumption in Europe, and a reduction in the reliance on Critical Raw Materials (CRMs). Funded projects should demonstrate their innovation in material design, implementation in miniaturised modules, integration within autonomous systems, and benchmarking in relevant environments.

This grant aims to strengthen the capacity of workers' organisations in EU Member States and candidate countries to address challenges at EU or transnational level, including changes in employment and working conditions and participation in social dialogue. It welcomes actions preparing negotiations of autonomous social partner agreements, supporting their implementation, and addressing themes such as employment and social challenges, labour market modernisation, digitalisation, just transition to a climate-neutral economy, skills development, and social protection.

The Net-Zero AI4Permitting grant aims to significantly increase the permitting management capacity of local authorities. The main objectives are to accelerate permitting procedures, primarily for authorities in net-zero acceleration valleys within coal regions, and to deploy state-of-the-art software, especially AI-based or digital technologies, to streamline compliance with the Net-Zero Industry Act requirements. Eligible activities include procurement of AI-based software, the extension of existing non-AI IT solutions with AI capabilities, procurement or development of dedicated non-AI IT solutions, and deployment-related activities such as integration and training.

The EdTech Accelerator aims to support European EdTech startups and SMEs in developing innovative educational technology solutions. The programme delivers a yearly 12-month incubation and acceleration framework, which provides mentoring, networking, consultancy, training, and business and access-to-market support. The accelerator also manages three open calls for pilots, supporting at least 20 EdTech startups/SMEs, and organizes impactful European-wide communication activities. The ultimate objective is to foster an EdTech ecosystem that drives innovation, creates jobs, and achieves clear educational outcomes, with a particular focus on ethics, inclusion, accessibility, privacy, security, and strong pedagogical foundations.

This grant supports the consolidation and extension of the Digital Skills and Jobs Platform, connecting national coalitions for digital skills and jobs to a unified EU platform. It aims to strengthen collaborations, further connect and develop national coalition websites, provide funding for the creation of new coalitions, and support national, regional, and local actors with relevant digital skills services. The goal is to sustain and stimulate activities leading to more active coalitions, an increase in the number of National Coalitions and coalition members, and to enhance interoperability with platforms like EIT Campus and sectoral academies.