Fireside chats with EIC Scaling Club companies and their lead mentors This session brings together three standout companies from the EIC Scaling Club and their lead mentors for an inside look at what it really takes to scale breakthrough European innovation. Through sector-specific fireside conversations, participants will uncover the strategies, challenges, and inflection points that define the scale-up journey across digital, sustainability, and health technologies.

This panel will bring together senior corporate leaders—CIOs, Heads of Innovation, Heads of Business Units, and Corporate Venturing executives—to discuss how Europe can accelerate deep tech adoption through stronger corporate–startup partnerships. Unlike traditional CVC-focused discussions, this session will concentrate on the business units, where real commercial partnerships, pilots, and scaling opportunities take place. The discussion will explore:

• The current state of deep-tech partnerships in Europe
• Why corporate engagement often stalls at POC stage
• What business units actually need from startups (e.g., AI, materials, robotics, sustainability, industrial automation)
• How corporates evaluate, integrate, and scale deep tech solutions
• How founders can build long-term, strategic relationships with major companies
  
  

Moderator: James Mawson, CEO of Global Corporate Venturing

The session will explore the three interconnected gaps facing Europe’s deep-tech scaleups: growth financing, public innovation procurement, and corporate collaboration. Recent findings reveal persistent shortages of late-stage capital (the EU attracts nearly nine times less venture capital per worker than the US), limited use of innovation-oriented public procurement (despite accounting for 16% of EU GDP), and a 69% failure rate in corporate–scaleup collaborations.

Moderated by the EIC SC team (Teresa Cunha) this session will highlight the work of the EIC SC in the last 2 years, involving a company, VC GP, CVC, mentor

Europe has proven it can build world-class startups, but it still lacks the deep, liquid, risk-capital markets required to scale them into global champions. While early-stage VC is thriving, growth capital remains Europe’s structural weak point. Late-stage rounds are smaller, scarcer, and slower than in the US, pushing founders to look abroad when ambition meets scale. At the heart of the gap is Europe’s chronic under-allocation of patient capital. Pension funds and endowments—representing a $210B opportunity if they matched US exposure—remain largely absent from the venture and growth ecosystem. Even new public initiatives, like the €5B EU Scale-Up Fund, are symbolic compared to the capital intensity required to support deep tech, life sciences, and global-scale category leaders. Europe stands at a crossroads: talent is here, innovation is here, and ambition is rising—but the capital firepower isn’t. Without deeper late-stage pools, harmonised rules, and public markets with real liquidity, Europe risks losing momentum just as it breaks through. The question now is whether Europe can build the mature funding market it needs, on its own terms.

Moderator: Shiva Dustdar, Director, Head and Dean of EIB Institute