Interregional Innovation Investments Strand 1 (I3-2025-INV1)

Objectives

Strand 1 of the I3 Instrument seeks to increase the competitiveness and the resilience of EU value chains on the basis of interregional cooperation and shared smart specialisation areas.

The objective of the I3 Instrument Strand 1 call for proposals is to support interregional innovation investments by offering consortia of innovation actors from the quadruple helix ecosystems the necessary financial and advisory support to bring their innovations to a mature level, ready for commercialisation and scale-up, while bridging and reducing the innovation divide in Europe with a strong cohesion policy focus of integrating all regions and in particular the less developed regions into European value chains.

Thereby, applications under this call seek to facilitate:

• the development of already existing or the creation of new interregional and cross-border value chains and a better connection between regional innovation ecosystems;
• the collaboration between innovation actors, especially SMEs, from less developed regions and innovation actors, especially SMEs, from more developed regions, contributing to cohesion policy objectives;
• the support of innovation actors with investment ideas that are ready to be developed into mature business cases;
• the identification of new regional technological domains and market opportunities with the EU priorities and bridging the gap between the supply and demand sides to help innovation ecosystems overcome market failures.

I3 Instrument business investment cases start with a minimum TRL 6 and have the ambition to facilitate demonstration and to accelerate market uptake and commercialisation. The development of the business and investment cases is facilitated by the regional innovation ecosystems with companies in the lead.

The support to be provided shall be (a) financial support, through direct funding to consortium beneficiaries or through cascade funding/financial support to third parties (FSTP), and (b) non-financial support, such as business and investment planning, protection of IPR, certification, commercialisation, standardisation, tailored support for the integration of KETs/deep tech in production processes, support in testing, demonstration and piloting new solutions.

At the end of the project implementation, all involved regions and partners should have a clear perspective on how to exploit and build on the I3 Instrument project results, including through the broad introduction of new products, services, or production processes.

Budget

The estimated total available call budget for 2025 is EUR 23 million.

Info session

An information session on the call targeted at eligible applicants will be held online on 11 June 2025.

Interested? Register here