8 French startups and SMEs winners of the EUREKA call for projects - International Challenge COVID-19

8 French startups and SMEs winners of the EUREKA call for projects – International Challenge COVID-19

23 septembre 2020

Bpifrance today announced the winners of the Covid-19 International Challenge. Following the call for projects open from 15 April to 15 May 2020, via the intergovernmental EUREKA network, 8 French startups and SMEs have been selected: Actility, Adelis, Bio Logbook, FieldBox.ai, MyDataModels, Partelec, Scaleo Industries and Virtexx.

The Covid-19 International Challenge is an initiative of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) to support and finance technological partnerships between innovative companies from different countries that wish to adapt or develop a solution that can limit or reduce the impact of the coronavirus crisis. Innovation funding agencies in seven countries, including Bpifrance for France, have mobilized to find synergies and accelerate projects under this program, which highlights the benefits of international collaboration in innovation.

The call for projects, opened in the midst of the pandemic, received more than 60 applications worldwide, including 12 involving French companies. After examination by the various innovation agencies behind this challenge, 8 French startups and SMEs were declared winners and will thus be supported and financed to carry out their international collaborative projects.

French companies and their foreign partners were selected according to criteria assessing the relevance and viability of their project, but also their ability to rapidly develop their solutions: the scheme targeted projects with a development period of 3 to 12 months maximum, with a market launch after 6 months at the end of product development.

The French laureates respond to three current and concrete issues:

To develop specific medical equipment to treat Covid-19 patients and reduce the saturation of health services;
Facilitate the diagnosis and development of viral vaccines in order to offer a long-term solution to the health crisis;
Securing workspaces and guaranteeing economic recovery with devices that ensure both the maintenance of company production and the necessary social distancing within industrial sites and offices.