On 28 May 2025, the European Innovation Council (EIC) hosted an EIC Corporate Day with Philips, bringing together the global health technology leader and 9 EIC-backed startups from 8 countries. Uniting some of the most promising start-ups from the EIC portfolio with sustainability, health, beauty and digital technology leaders from Philips, the activity featured reverse pitch by the corporate, startup presentations, interactive Q&A sessions, and tailored one-on-one meetings aimed at driving concrete business outcomes.
This exclusive acceleration activity, part of the EIC Business Acceleration Services, was designed to foster collaboration between innovative EIC-funded companies and leading European corporations, offering support to stimulate potential collaboration, pilot programmes, co-development partnerships, and strategic investments.
Maarteen Van den Boogaard, Open Innovation Leader at Philips:
At Philips, we are committed to improving 2.5 billion lives per year by 2030 through meaningful innovation and partnerships. The EIC Corporate Partnership Programme provides us access to exceptional, pre-selected companies that are well-prepared to tackle our technology challenges with breakthrough solutions that align with our mission to make life better.
The selected startups, chosen by Philips and trained by the EIC to align with their innovation priorities, showcased cutting-edge solutions in areas such as health technology, beauty, AI, sustainability, and digital solutions:
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CosmEthics (Finland) building Europe's largest normalised label database for product safety and ingredient transparency.
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Ecopolplast (Poland) creating breakthrough circular thermoplastics from 100% recycled content reducing CO₂ emissions.
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Elem Biotech (Spain) developing Virtual Humans and Virtual Human Twins for precision medicine applications.
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Linknovate Science (Spain) bringing AI-driven intelligence to corporate innovation scouting and monitoring.
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Nafici Environmental Research (United Kingdom) converting agricultural residues into high-quality paper pulp for sustainable packaging.
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ONiO (Norway) revolutionising ultra-low-power microcontrollers with battery less IoT solutions.
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Raiku Packaging (Estonia) developing 100% natural and compostable packaging materials to replace plastics.
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Voiseed (Italy) pioneering generative AI technology for expressive voice production and dubbing.
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Xsensio (Switzerland) developing Lab-on-Skin sensing platforms for real-time patient monitoring.
For the start-ups, this acceleration programme offered a unique chance to engage directly with key decision-makers from one of the world's leading health technology companies, said Katarzyna Pokwicka-Croucher, Founder and CEO of Ecopolplast:
The Corporate Partnership Programme allowed us to better understand the needs of Philips' innovation team and discover how well they align with our offering. We are looking forward to further collaboration.
Additional information
About the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme
The EIC Corporate Partnership Programme, an initiative of the EIC Business Acceleration Services, allows EIC-backed innovators to boost their network and do business with relevant decision-makers from the largest companies in Europe. Since 2017, the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme has organised 74 initiatives with +120 corporate partners including ABB, Airbus, BMW, CaixaBank, CommerzBank, Enel, Ferrovial, L'Oreal, Medtronic, Neste, Roche, Saint-Gobain, Shell, Siemens Energy, Solvay or Telefonica. Over 1200 EIC-funded startups and scaleups and +2500 corporate high-level representatives have been able to participate in these initiatives reporting a significant business impact, follow-ups, and business deals.
The EIC is looking for large corporations with open innovation spirit, interested in integrating innovations coming from startups, scaleups and research projects directly into their business offering, procurement and R&D activities, as well as investing in highly innovative/deep tech companies. Open application for corporations.
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DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.