Meet the winning startups of the EU’s Innovation Radar Prize 2025
The European Commission has just awarded prizes to four European startups and SMEs which are bringing to market promising innovations developed with EU research and innovation funding.
The awards were announced at the Innovation Radar Prize ceremony, attended by investors and innovation leaders. Twelve EU-funded startups from across Europe competed in 3 prize categories.
The 2025 Innovation Radar Prize was the 11th edition of this long-standing celebration of EU innovative excellence. Organised by the European Commission and the Innovation Radar Bridge initiative, it took place in the Unicorn Factory Lisboa, Portugal on the 10th of November 2025.
At the event, each of the twelve finalists – all SMEs, startups or spinoffs who had previously received research and innovation funding from the European Commission – delivered a pitch to a jury of investors and entrepreneurs outlining their innovations and plans to scale them in the marketplace.
Overall Winner:
The jury awarded ExoMatter, a startup from Germany, with the overall 2025 Innovation Radar Prize for their innovative ExoMatter Platform for Materials R&D, which offers easily searchable AI-enriched data for scientific materials screening, through powerful filters and Exira, the first natural language AI-Agent in this field. More information can be found on the ExoMatter website.
Category Winner ‘Climate, Energy & Mobility’:
Ecolyte, from Austria, won the ‘Climate, Energy & Mobility’ category for their sustainable technology solutions that aim to improve daily life while protecting our planet. Their eco-friendly products aim to boost energy efficiency and reduce waste across multiple sectors, including energy storage, energy conversion, and water remediation. More information can be found on the Ecolyte website.
Category Winner ‘AI & Digital Intelligence’:
Minespider, from Germany, won the ‘AI & Digital Intelligence’ category for their supply chain traceability solutions, primarily focusing on the mineral market. The Minespider platform operates in the realm of responsible, compliant, and circular mineral supply chains. More information can be found on the Minespider website.
Category Winner ‘Smart Hardware & Robotics’:
Equal1, from Ireland, won the ‘Smart Hardware & Robotics’ category for their quantum-computing technology delivering scalable, on-premises quantum solutions by augmenting today’s CPU/GPU workloads with QPU (quantum processing unit) to make exponential quantum-computing power available globally. More information can be found on the Equal1 website.
About the Innovation Radar Prize
The Innovation Radar is the European Commission’s initiative to make it easier to discover innovations emerging from research and innovation projects financed by the EU under Horizon Europe, the world’s largest public funded research and innovation programme. Featuring over 15k EU-funded innovations, it puts a spotlight on excellence and offers the opportunity to seek out innovators who could follow in the footsteps of companies such as BioNTech, Skype and ARM Holdings, all of whom received EU funding in their early days.
This year’s prize scheme was open to over 2000 EU-funded innovators across Europe – SMEs, startups and spinoffs – developing a wide range of ground-breaking innovations.
The post Meet the winning startups of the EU’s Innovation Radar Prize 2025 appeared first on EU-Startups.
