European Innovation Council
The European Innovation Council (EIC) is the European Union's public deep-tech funding programme, backing breakthrough startups across Europe. Run on a 10 billion euro Horizon Europe budget, it pairs grants with equity, and water reaches it through deep tech: as of 2026 the EIC has funded three water companies across three rounds.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
The European Innovation Council is the rarest kind of investor I track in water: a public body that takes equity stakes, the way a private venture fund does. Set up by the European Commission in 2021 and running on a 10 billion euro Horizon Europe budget, the EIC backs deep tech, the hard science that needs a decade and deeper pockets than most investors will commit. Its signature instrument, the EIC Accelerator, blends a grant with an equity investment in the same company, a structure almost no private fund can match.
The money flows through two linked vehicles. The EIC Accelerator, led by Denisa Perrin, selects the startups and hands out grants of up to 2.5 million euros; the EIC Fund, a roughly 4 billion euro vehicle advised by the European Investment Bank, then takes the equity stake. An external manager makes the actual investment calls, so the EIC behaves less like a single fund and more like a state-run pipeline from lab bench to scale-up, across every sector Europe deems strategic.
Water is never a headline thesis at the EIC; it surfaces wherever deep tech happens to touch it. Across the three water companies I have logged, the pattern is monitoring and molecules, not pipes and pumps: Variolytics, a Stuttgart firm whose sensors track greenhouse-gas emissions inside wastewater plants; Holloid, a Vienna spin-off using holographic microscopy to watch microbes in real time; and AQUABATTERY, a Delft team storing energy in nothing but salt and water. Three companies, three rounds, and the EIC led two of them.
As of 2026 the EIC is widening its equity ambitions. It has launched the Scaleup Europe Fund, a 5 billion euro vehicle with EQT as manager, built to keep Europe's biggest deep-tech scale-ups on the continent, and its board, chaired by Michiel Scheffer, is piloting new Advanced Innovation Challenges. For a newcomer, the EIC is the clearest case I track of public money behaving like venture capital, and of water arriving through the deep-tech door rather than the utility one.
Water Commitment Score
Compiled from official filings, third-party records, and direct intelligence from investors and founders, in Leviathan · recomputed monthly · as of Jun 2026.
How they invest
Portfolio · 3 water companies
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What is the European Innovation Council?
- The European Innovation Council (EIC) is the European Union's deep-tech funding programme, launched in 2021 under Horizon Europe with a 10 billion euro budget. The EIC supports breakthrough startups and SMEs through grants, equity from the EIC Fund, and acceleration services, spanning every strategic sector from health and energy to water.
- Is the European Innovation Council a venture capital fund?
- The European Innovation Council is a public body, not a private venture fund, but it invests like one. Its equity arm, the roughly 4 billion euro EIC Fund, takes ownership stakes in startups picked by the EIC Accelerator, alongside the grants that make its blended-finance model distinctive among investors.
- What water companies has the European Innovation Council funded?
- The European Innovation Council has backed three water companies I track in my Leviathan database: Variolytics, which monitors emissions inside wastewater plants; Holloid, a holographic microbe-monitoring spin-off; and AQUABATTERY, a saltwater energy-storage startup. All three were funded through the EIC Accelerator, and the EIC led two of the three rounds.
- How does EIC Accelerator funding work?
- The EIC Accelerator offers blended finance: a grant of up to 2.5 million euros to de-risk the technology, plus an optional equity investment of up to 10 million euros from the EIC Fund. Denisa Perrin heads the unit, which selects deep-tech startups across Europe, including the water companies in the EIC portfolio.
- Where is the European Innovation Council based?
- The European Innovation Council is run from Brussels, Belgium, by the European Commission and its executive agency, EISMEA. Created in 2021 under the Horizon Europe research programme, the EIC operates Europe-wide rather than from one investment office, funding startups across every EU member state and associated country.