The EIC Accelerator funding (grant and equity, with blended financing option) by the European Commission (EC) and the European Innovation Council (EIC) awards up to €2.5 million in grant and €10 million in equity financing per project (€12.5 million total). This article provides a perspective on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in grant writing and its impact on startups and Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) as well as professional writers, freelancers, and consultants.
Find Part 1 and Part 2 here. This article is Part 3 of the series on AI grant writing for the EIC Accelerator. Find ChatEIC here.
It is not an obvious conclusion that using AI will lead to a quality tradeoff, but it can be true if the term quality is exchanged with the term detail. The amount of detail or, conversely, the amount of vagueness a proposal displays is directly impacting the evaluation. This is not true for all sections, of course, since some parts such as diversity, female participation, EIC impact on the company, the mission, job creation, or the vision are sufficiently generic, but the overall level of detail can make or break a proposal.
What Is Quality, Really?
Viewing quality through the lens of detail is reductive but useful, so let’s expand and define what makes an EIC Accelerator proposal high quality:
- Project and Company: The company and technology must be of sufficient quality to tick the checkboxes in the subjective minds of the remote evaluators and the EIC Jury members. While there is a high level of randomness in the process, the general themes are: DeepTech (i.e., scientific advancement), a competent team (i.e., seems like they know what they are doing), playing the VC game (i.e., having raised and planning to raise more private financing), and a significant opportunity (i.e., market + traction).
- Detail: Quantifications and explicit namedrops throughout the proposal are essential to ensure that everything is presented for maximum impact. Vague proposals draw criticism since evaluators have to specifically grade certain criteria (i.e., competitors, USP, development goals) which is impossible without sufficient data being available.
- Alignment: The proposal must be aligned with EIC criteria (i.e., see Evaluation Summary Report – ESR) and the overall role the EIC wishes to play (i.e., read the documents the EIC publishes and the social media posts by EIC staff).
- Writing: The writing needs to be coherent and of high quality, meaning that every sentence should make sense in its respective section, add value to the overall story, and connect to the rest of the proposal.
- Consistency: There should be no contradictions or inconsistencies in the proposal, and it is generally better to repeat the same number 50 times than to have two contradicting numbers in the proposal. Evaluators never complain that they do not understand a complicated technology (i.e., who would dare to admit that?) or that a number is repeated too many times (i.e., evaluators tend to skim certain sections anyway) but they will complain if they spot a contradiction even if it is entirely irrelevant.
AI-written EIC Accelerator proposals will have an easy time in some quality areas but difficult times in others. It will be impossible to make a poor project seem groundbreaking (i.e., putting make-up on a pig), but it will be easy to align the narrative with EIC criteria since this is expertise-based.
How Does AI Handle Quality Criteria?
In general, AI writers will be able to handle quality in the following ways:
- Project and Company: It can highlight the good and be vague when it comes to the bad, but it cannot change the company and project. Every applicant should assess if they are a good fit for the EIC Accelerator before they start. While the EIC tries to push the responsibility of the assessment onto consultants while simultaneously claiming that applicants do not need consultants, the initial self-assessment generally relies on how the EIC communicates. If the EIC is not transparently publishing explicit success rates and is merely parroting high-level talking points (i.e., innovative, disruptive, technology), then every startup will think they fit. The EIC must change its marketing to properly filter companies, but AI cannot help with that, and consultants are not incentivized to do it for them.
- Detail: This will heavily depend on the input provided by applicants and on the way the AI is programmed to handle the writing in the absence of detail. The ideal way to handle it is to add placeholders in key sections that allow companies to fill them in (i.e., patent numbers, USP quantifiers) or to give the AI an internet search function to draw data from the web (i.e., market reports, EU policies – see ChatEIC web search feature).
- Alignment: This is very easily handled by AI writers (i.e., ChatEIC) since it depends on the AI’s programming, which draws from the expertise consultants have gained over many years of trial and error. If one knows what a section needs to contain, it is useful to add more restrictive instructions to the AI to ensure that no red flags are embedded. Going against EIC rules is equivalent to asking for rejection since the evaluators will have no choice but to reject the project (i.e., wrong Technology Readiness Level – TRL, funding amount, financial narrative, project implementation, etc.).
- Writing: This is easy for AI grant writers since they do not make grammatical mistakes, add typos, or include nonsensical sentences. At worst, the output will be vague, hallucinated, or miss the point. However, the downsides can be removed by aiding an AI writer through sufficient input (i.e., the template used by ChatEIC), giving clear instructions for each section, and leveraging web search when needed.
- Consistency: A challenge for AI is ensuring that every single part of the proposal makes sense in relation to the rest. Since AI is still heavily limited by its context windows, there is a threshold that cannot be exceeded when it comes to instructions, text input, and text output. That is why producing an entire 50-page proposal from a single prompt and having it be of high quality is still infeasible, at least for now. However, the AI can cohesively handle fragments, ensuring they are nearly stand-alone without requiring other sections to reiterate the same information. If each section is coherent and aligned with the respective section instructions, the overall product will be coherent by default.
AI can handle quality very well, but it often depends on proper tools (i.e., web search), instructions (i.e., consultancy experience), and input data (i.e., applicants filling out a template for ChatEIC). If all three are in place, the quality will be very high.
Are Consultants On Their Last Breath?
The short answer is: No.
The long answer is: Maybe.
Consultants do way more than just write grants, and it has been clear for a long time that the main role consultants play might shift from supporting companies through the process to finding the right companies and bringing them to the EIC (i.e. transitioning from writer to scout). If the evaluation process becomes less difficult (i.e., AI-based), then the natural conclusion will be that consultancies will have no work to do when it comes to writing and will need to shift all their attention to scouting.
But this shift does not have to be a bad thing. Considering the way the EIC regularly earmarks millions of Euros for consultants and contractors in their Work Programs and often uses consultants as project managers or in similar roles, the EIC is more aligned with consultants than with startups. One could speculate as to why, but it is likely that EIC members would rather transition to a private industry role at a consultancy than at a tech company, just like FDA staff is known to gain high-paying jobs at pharmaceutical companies after regulating them.
This relationship creates a natural affinity, rendering consultancies an important part of the ecosystem—often more critical than the startups that the EIC supports. Is that a strong statement? Maybe, but it is a fact that all consultants get paid while over 95% of startups go home empty – albeit the payday is better for those who win.
The EIC Likes to Make It Worse for Applicants
A good example of this is the way the EIC handles the travel reimbursements for EIC Accelerator Step 3 interview invitees—or how it used to handle them. It used to pay for travel expenditures since companies have to travel to Brussels and it would be considered unfair for Israeli, Ukrainian, or founders from other remote countries to make the trip at their own expense if Belgian startups could just drive to Brussels by car (or bike). This was a great initiative that was thoughtful and considered discrepancies in economic situations in eligible countries, whereas some would be greatly disadvantaged in an already competitive process.
In 2025, the EIC removed all travel reimbursements.
It is already known that the EIC Accelerator has a strong pay-to-play character due to consultancy support fees but removing travel reimbursements will make it even more difficult for widening countries to compete effectively. Removing travel reimbursements was a disastrous decision and makes no sense considering that the EIC’s mission is to support companies, be inclusive and not to paywall the final interview. The EIC should be a scout that finds the best companies, not a king in a high castle looking for the highest bidder.
Well, removing the travel reimbursements does make sense if the EIC actually cares more about consultants than about the applicants. Here is a quote from the 2025 EIC Work Programme:
“As highly qualified specialized business coaches, their fees will be proportionate to their high-level strategic support, and it will closely mirror the international level of fees for experts performing tasks of similar nature. In this respect, EIC business coaches will receive EUR 1,000 per day of coaching (corresponding to EUR 500 per half day), which is considered to be proportionate to the specific services that EIC business coaches will provide, which are more complex than the standard tasks of expert evaluators.”
Considering that each Step 2 applicant obtains three days of coaching, which comes down to €3,000 each for thousands of applicants, the EIC has earmarked €7.9 million for contractors, so it is no surprise that the travel reimbursements had to go.
What is most shocking about this change is that these business coaches, who explicitly have to help applicants succeed in writing their Step 2 application, have not written a successful EIC Accelerator proposal before, at least that is not a requirement to get the gig. This should be the key job requirement. If you advise on a process as an expert, then you should have successfully completed the process before.
But the EIC does not seem to care about that. If the EIC cared about applicants, it could do the following: Give them the choice.
Would you rather obtain three days of coaching by a business coach who has not successfully written the proposal they will be advising you on, or would you prefer full travel cost reimbursement in case you reach the Step 3 interview?
That would be the right thing to do for the EIC. Let’s observe if they will realize it.
Quality, Consultancies and Change
With the quality of generative AI tools rapidly increasing, consultants will have less work in research and writing areas, but there are many other roles that they can transition into. Most consultants already have various revenue streams and generally diversify into different areas.
Regarding consultancies specializing in the EIC grants, there will always be a role for them since the EIC has a soft spot for consultants. It not only employs them lavishly and often irrationally, but it also creates new roles for them: Evaluators, jury members, ambassadors, community managers, business coaches, project managers, thematic experts, due diligence facilitators, and more – this also further expands towards National Contact Points (NCP) which have their own networks of contractors. There will always be new ways to employ consultants and keep them close.
And lastly, consultants have to keep an open mind. Nobody wants to be disrupted, but if everyone hesitates to disrupt, then disruption is all that awaits them.
What comes next in AI grant writing? This will be discussed in Part 4.
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These tips are not only useful for European startups, professional writers, consultants and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME) but are generally recommended when writing a business plan or investor documents.
Deadlines: Post-Horizon 2020, the EIC Accelerator accepts Step 1 submissions now while the deadlines for the full applications (Step 2) under Horizon Europe are:
- Step 1
- Open now: Apply as soon as possible to be eligible for the next Step 2 submission deadline
- Step 2 (closing 17:00 Brussels Time)
- 1st cut-off 2025: -
- 2nd cut-off 2025: March 12th 2025
- 3rd cut-off 2025: -
- 4th cut-off 2025: October 1st 2025
- Step 3
- 1st cut-off 2025: -
- 2nd cut-off 2025: TBD
- 3rd cut-off 2025: -
- 4th cut-off 2025: TBD
The Step 1 applications must be submitted weeks in advance of Step 2. The next EIC Accelerator cut-off for Step 2 (full proposal) can be found here. After Brexit, UK companies can still apply to the EIC Accelerator under Horizon Europe albeit with non-dilutive grant applications only - thereby excluding equity-financing.
Contact: You can reach out to us via this contact form to work with a professional consultant.
AI Grant Writer: ChatEIC is a fully automated EIC Accelerator grant proposal writer: Get it here.
EU, UK & US Startups: Alternative financing options for EU, UK and US innovation startups are the EIC Pathfinder (combining Future and Emerging Technologies - FET Open & FET Proactive) with €4M per project, Thematic Priorities, European Innovation Partnerships (EIP), Innovate UK with £3M (for UK-companies only) as well as the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants with $1M (for US-companies only).
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by Stephan Segler, PhD
Professional Grant Consultant at Segler Consulting
General information on the EIC Accelerator template, professional grant writing and how to prepare a successful application can be found in the following articles:
A Quick FTO Guide for EIC Accelerator Applicants in a Rush
2023 Budget Allocations for EIC Pathfinder, Transition and Accelerator
Developing the Unique Selling Points (USP) for the EIC Accelerator
Explaining the Resubmission Process for the EIC Accelerator
A Short but Comprehensive Explanation of the EIC Accelerator
Deciding Between EIC Pathfinder, Transition and Accelerator
A Winning Candidate for the EIC Accelerator
EIC Accelerator Interview Preparation Process: Scripting the Pitch (Part 1)
