EIC Scaling Club News

Congratulations to the winners of the 2024 Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge

Written by EIC Scaling Club | Mar 26, 2024 3:36:35 PM

The Hello Tomorrow Global Summit, the annual global gathering of the deep tech ecosystem, has come to a close and the winning startups of their Global Startup Challenge are announced.

As a valued partner of the EIC Scaling Club, we'd like to congratulate all the winners, but also give kudos to the Hello Tomorrow team for putting on a great event and attracting such strong companies to its startup competition, now in its 9th year running.

The following winners were chosen among 70 startup finalists that were selected from over 4,000 applications (!) worldwide.

The main four victors 

This year, Hello Tomorrow awarded €100,000 to the Grand Winner of their Global Challenge: tozero, for their groundbreaking process to recover critical materials from all types of lithium-ion batteries. They are able to take old batteries and reintroduce fresh, raw materials back into the supply chain.

Robeauté took home the second prize, awarded by X, the moonshot factory. They are redesigning the future of neurosurgery by creating the new standard device that will provide surgeons with seamless access to delicate areas of the brain. 

Jurata Thin Film is the winner of the third prize; their thin film technology revolutiones the storage and delivery of vaccines and therapeutics to people throughout the world. 

The special Boston Consulting Group award went to Cambrium. Their mission is to trigger the next wave of material innovation by harnessing nature’s protein building blocks.

The 10 track winners

Winner of the “Advanced Computing & Electronics” category supported by Intel Ignite, Murata and imec.xpand: FononTech (Netherlands) Reshaping 3D microelectronics with ultra fast printing resolutions.

Winner of the “Aerospace” category supported by Safran: ION-X (France) Developing a new type of small satellite propulsion with an ionic liquid electrospray thruster. 

Winner of the “Digital Health & Medical Devices” category supported by Nitto: Robeauté (France) Developing a microrobot for novel therapies in hard-to-reach areas of the body. 

Winner of the “Energy” category supported by Honda Xcelerator & GTT: Tozero (Germany) Bringing lithium-ion battery waste to zero. 

Winner of the “Environment & Biodiversity” category supported by L’Oréal: Carbon Atlantis (Germany) Low-cost electrochemical approach for direct air and point source capture. 

Winner of the “Food & Agriculture” category supported by Avril and Supernova Invest: Perfat Technologies (Finland) Offering food producers a new kind of solid fat with a superior nutritional profile. 

Winner of the “Industrial Biotech & New Materials” category supported by Syensqo: TopoLogic (Japan) Developing innovative electronics using topological material. 

Winner of the “Industry & Machines” category: InSpek (France) Improving bioprocesses through real-time monitoring with optical microchip sensors. 

Winner of the “Medical Biotech & Pharmaceuticals” category supported by Biolabs: Jurata Thin Film (United States) New packaging to allow long-term storage of vaccines and biologics at room temperature or higher. 

Winner of the “Sustainable Construction & Infrastructure” category supported by LEONARD: Photio (Chile) Using nanotechnology to simulate the photosynthesis process on any surface. 

A word from the CEO

Arnaud de la Tour, co-founder and CEO of Hello Tomorrow, said: “The world has changed a lot since the first edition of the HelloTomorrow Global Challenge, when few people cared about scientific entrepreneurship. The startups that have won today are fortunate to rely on a global movement that supports their development: deep tech."

"These solutions are a priority for governments, large corporations and investors. In positive news this year, these three winners are all women-led startups. They won simply because they were the best out of over 4,000 applications, and I hope that this will inspire many other women to follow their lead. We need as many talented individuals as possible working on solving our greatest challenges, and all efforts possible to make the deep tech ecosystem more inclusive,” de la Tour added.

About the EIC Scaling Club

The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.

The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.

The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.

Subscribe to our newsletter here to stay up-to-date!