Open calls · Research grant · Business, Management and Accounting
Apply AI: Challenge-Driven AI Innovation Booster in Apply AI prioritised sectors (RIA) (Partnership in AI, Data and Robotics)
European Commission · Horizon Europe · HORIZON-CL4-2027-04-DIGITAL-EMERGING-04
Deadlines
- 18 Mar 2027 Deadline in 127 days
Time of day: 17:00 Brussels time.
Who can apply
- Countries
- Applicants from any country can take part. Funding is usually limited to the EU, associated countries and listed low- and middle-income countries; sanctions apply to some.
- Who applies
- A consortium of organisations
Money
- Per project
- up to €14M per project
- Total budget
- €42M
- Expected awards
- 3
About the call
Expected Outcome:
The Apply AI Strategy [1] proposes a comprehensive set of measures to notably harness the transformative potential of AI. It lays down targeted measures to boost AI use in key strategic sectors of the EU economy including healthcare, mobility and manufacturing for example. With challenges designed to spark breakthroughs in such strategic sectors, the current topic will directly support key activities of the Apply AI Strategy.
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
• Significant technological progress and innovation in Apply AI Strategy's prioritised sectors driven by challenge-oriented, AI-powered solutions.
• Increase competitiveness and visibility of the relevant AI community within key application sectors, and promote collaborative approaches for AI development in these sectors, fostering the ecosystem.
• Increase adoption of AI technologies across the following three key application sectors: healthcare, advanced manufacturing (including AI-powered robotics) and in-vehicle autonomous driving.
Scope:
The Challenge-Driven AI Innovation Booster aims to drive significant technological progress and innovation in Apply AI prioritised sectors through challenge-oriented, AI-powered solutions. This initiative seeks to boost Europe's developer community and the adoption of powerful, trustworthy AI solutions in three strategic sectors such as:
• In healthcare - advanced AI will accelerate diagnostics and treatment plans, enhance robotic surgery, or improve patient care through predictive analytics.
• In advanced manufacturing - advanced AI will optimize production processes, improve quality control and product design, or enable predictive maintenance.
• In autonomous driving - advanced AI will enhance vehicle safety, improve navigation systems, or optimize traffic management. Provided sufficient quality of the proposals received, at least one selected project will focus on in-vehicle autonomous driving applications, in line with the Automotive Action Plan, ensuring coordination with the announced Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Alliance.
Each proposal should address exclusively on one of the three key sectors mentioned above, and clearly indicate which sector they address.
It is expected to focus primarily on the definition and organization of a multi-stage competition in the chosen sector, as well as on the accompanying support to the SMEs/teams taking part in each of the challenges.
User-industry companies from the strategic sector targeted by the proposal should be core partners in each consortium. They should demonstrate a genuine interest in the project results and therefore support the challenge participants to reach the most powerful and exploitable results benefiting their industry. The expected results are pre-competitive, but the proposal must include a draft exploitation plan focused on how the solutions developed by the third parties will be taken up, with support from the user-industry partners for their future exploitation.
The consortium leading the project is responsible for the various stages of the challenges. This consortium should provide the necessary support resources during each stage of the competition (including technical assistance and business support to develop an exploitation strategy) and, most importantly, the consortium should ensure that the teams competing for and receiving financial support to third parties have access to relevant data to fine-tune models and build high-impact solutions meeting industry needs.
Proposals should be driven by impactful use-cases where advanced AI can make the difference: a number of industries from the targeted sector are expected to join forces to define challenging problems to solve with advanced AI solutions, which then drive the rest of the project. Based on such challenges, each project consortium should organize a multi-staged competition with an increasing level of complexity. In the different stages (see below), third parties, either single SMEs or small teams of organisations led by an SME, compete to address the challenges with advanced AI solutions.
For each proposal:
Stage 1 - Open call: The consortium launches an open call for proposals. A challenge, open to all, will allow the selection for Stage 2 of the 10 highest-ranked proposals according to a pre-defined selection process and criteria. Each solution is expected to be submitted either by a single SME, developer of advanced AI solutions, or a small team of organizations led by such SME.
Stage 2 - Competition among Stage 1 winners: The 10 teams or organisations selected from Stage 1 receive a EUR 300,000 FSTP grant each in accordance with their successfully selected proposal (which addresses the tasks and challenges defined for this stage by the consortium). At the end of Stage 2, the 4 highest-ranked solutions will be selected for the next stage according to a pre-defined selection process and criteria.
Stage 3 – Grand finale (Competition among Stage 2 winners): The 4 teams or organisations selected from Stage 2 receive EUR 2,250,000 FSTP grants each in accordance with their successfully selected proposals to address the tasks and challenges for this stage. In conjunction, they will prepare for the grand finale that will identify the best performing solution at the end of Stage 3 according to the evaluation methodology defined by the consortium.
The consortium should define measures to support the winners in maximizing the impact and uptake of their solutions. For instance, after the end of the FSTP grant, the best-performing team could be offered the opportunity to conclude partnerships or contracts with the user industries leading the consortium. Measures to support the broad uptake of their solutions in the whole sector should also be considered.
Such a multi-staged scheme is expected to be implemented in parallel by the projects funded under this action, each addressing a different…
Text from the funder (European Commission, CC BY 4.0).
Conditions in full
"> General conditions
1. Admissibility Conditions: Proposal page limit and layout
described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes.
Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.
2. Eligible Countries
described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide .
3. Other Eligible Conditions
In order to achieve the expected outcomes, and safeguard the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, and security, it is important to avoid a situation of technological dependency on a non-EU source, in a global context that requires the EU to take action to build on its strengths, and to carefully assess and address any strategic weaknesses, vulnerabilities and high-risk dependencies which put at risk the attainment of its ambitions. For this reason, participation is limited to legal entities established in Member States, Iceland and Norway and the following additional associated countries: Canada, Israel, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. In addition, entities established in third countries which may become associated to Horizon Europe during 2026 and 2027 may be eligible to participate in this topic if the third country is identified for this topic as an eligible country in the List of Participating Countries in Horizon Europe at the time of submission of the application[[See the List of Participating Countries in Horizon Europe available at https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/common/guidance/list-3rd-country-participation_horizon-euratom_en.pdf .]]. In any case, the association agreement to the Programme must apply by the time of the signature of the grant agreement.
For the duly justified and exceptional reasons listed in the paragraph above, in order to guarantee the protection of the strategic interests of the Union and its Member States, entities established in an eligible country listed above, but which are directly or indirectly controlled by a non-eligible country or by a non-eligible country entity, may not participate in the action unless it can be demonstrated, by means of guarantees positively assessed by their eligible country of establishment, that their participation to the action would not negatively impact the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, or security . Entities established in an eligible country, but which are directly or indirectly controlled by China or by a legal entity established in China cannot submit guarantees.
[[ The guarantees shall in particular substantiate that, for the purpose of the action, measures are in place to ensure that: a) control over the applicant legal entity is not exercised in a manner that retrains or restricts its ability to carry out the action and to deliver results, that imposes restrictions concerning its infrastructure, facilities, assets, resources, intellectual property or know-how needed for the purpose of the action, or that undermines its capabilities and standards necessary to carry out the action; b) access by a non-eligible country or by a non-eligible country entity to sensitive information relating to the action is prevented; and the employees or other persons involved in the action have a national security clearance issued by an eligible country, where appropriate; c) ownership of the intellectual property arising from, and the results of, the action remain within the recipient during and after completion of the action, are not subject to control or restrictions by non-eligible countries or non-eligible country entity, and are not exported outside the eligible countries, nor is access to them from outside the eligible…
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