European Commission - Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology
European Commission - Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology
11/12/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 11/12/2025 05:30
Winners of the EU’s 2025 Innovation Radar Prize announced
The European Commission awarded prizes to European startups and SMEs who are bringing to market promising innovations developed with EU research and innovation funding.
The 2025 Innovation Radar Prize was the 11th edition of this 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 10 November 2025. Twelve EU-funded startups from across Europe competed in 3 prize categories.
At the event each of the 12 finalists - all SMEs, startups or spinoffs who had previously received research and innovation funding from the European Commission - delivered a pitch to investors and entrepreneurs outlining their ground-breaking innovations and plans to scale them in the marketplace.
Overall Winner
ExoMatter, a startup from Germany, were awarded 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.
Category Winner 'Climate, Energy & Mobility'
Ecolyte, from Austria, won the 'Climate, Energy & Mobility' category for their innovative ion conductive, paper-based membrane that can be used in batteries, fuel cells, electrolyzers and water purification systems.
Category Winner 'AI & Digital Intelligence'
Minespider, from Germany, won the 'AI & Digital Intelligence' category for their innovative Digital Product Passports (DPP) solution that facilitates supply chain traceability, primarily for the mineral market.
Category Winner 'Smart Hardware & Robotics'
Equal1, from Ireland, won the 'Smart Hardware & Robotics' category for bringing to market QPU (quantum processing unit) technology in a rack-mounted server form factor, that offers plug-and-play data-centre integration.
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 15.000 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.
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