Frequently Asked Questions WTEU2

Women TechEU targets early-stage deep tech startups founded, or co-founded, by women holding a top management position (CEO, CTO or equivalent). Women should hold at least 25% of the shares in the company at the time of submission. The company must be registered and established in an EU Member State or a Horizon Europe Pillar III Associated Country for at least six months and a maximum of five years from the time of submission to the eligibility cut-off.

Under Horizon Europe, a 'startup' should be understood as an SME in the early stage of its life cycle, including those that are created as spin-offs from university research activities, which aims to find innovative solutions and scalable business models, and which is autonomous within the meaning of Article 3 of the Annex to EU recommendation 2003/361:

• An "autonomous enterprise" is any enterprise which is not classified as a partner enterprise within the meaning of paragraph 2 or as a linked enterprise within the meaning of paragraph 3
• Employ fewer than 250 persons
• Have an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 50 million, or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 43 million

Applicants may wish to refer to the EU's SME User Guide for an explanatory guide on what constitutes an autonomous SME, which is neither a partner nor a linked enterprise.

Their legal form must be of a commercial entity (thus not a Foundation or NGO). Furthermore they must be at a stage before reaching a high fidelity Minimum Viable Product (between TRL4 and TRL6, both included) as well as having raised less than 1M€ in equity.

The startup should be a deep tech company aiming to provide concrete solutions to our societal problems by finding its source in a deep interaction with the most recent scientific and technological advances and by seeking to produce a profound impact in the targeted application areas. Women TechEU welcomes applications from all deep tech fields of activity. If your deep tech innovation includes AI, please note that the stage of development of your AI will be the determining factor of whether you are eligible or not for the Women TechEU programme. Neither the application as a whole nor any parts of it should have already benefitted from a previous Women TechEU initiative or EIC Accelerator.

Missing any single one of the above criteria will immediately render your application as non eligible.

The applicable list is the one published by the European Commission at the time of submission: Associated countries. 

The Women TechEU project is funded under Pillar III (EIC Work Programme), therefore only those countries that are associated to the entire Programme or to Pillar III are considered as eligible. Currently, these are:

Eligible EU countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

Eligible associated countries: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine and United Kingdom.

Yes. The UK is associated to the entire Programme, with the only exception of the EIC fund, which is part of the EIC Accelerator of Horizon Europe that provides investment through equity or other repayable form.

Yes. Switzerland became associated to Horizon Europe for award procedures implementing Union budget for the year 2025 and onwards, and therefore companies based in Switzerland can now be beneficiaries of Women TechEU, which implements Union budget for the year 2026.

As a programme, Women TechEU has always been about addressing the structural barriers faced by women founders in deep tech,  and seeks to bring about equitable change in the ecosystem. In the currently open Women TechEU call, another systematic barrier is being addressed by the programme: those faced by women based in countries with less developed R&I ecosystems, such as limited scientific infrastructure, weaker investor and business networks, and talent retention issues. The Horizon Europe programme (the programme under which Women TechEU is funded) provides additional support to such countries through its Widening Sub-Programme. In order for a more equitable balance, and to support those who need it most, Women TechEU will reserve 40% of its budget from each cut-off to those startups based in Widening countries. This ensures that 40% of beneficiaries will be from Widening countries. All applicants will nonetheless go through the same rigorous evaluation process to select the best from each stream of applicants (Widening and non-Widening). 

Beyond this reserved budget applicable for Widening applicants (that applies equally for all Widening countries), there is no other consideration made with regards to which country an applicant is based in. As long as the country is eligible (consult with FAQ), all countries have the same standing in terms of evaluation criteria.

Widening areas are those countries and territories covered by Horizon Europe’s “Widening participation and spreading excellence”, including Widening EU Member States, Associated Countries with equivalent characteristics in terms of R&I performance, and the Outermost Regions as defined in Article 349 TFEU. Eligible widening countries must be within the 22 Horizon Europe participating countries, dated as 12.02.2026.

For the purposes of the Women TechEU call, widening areas include:

Widening EU Member States: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Widening Associated Countries: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye and Ukraine.

Outermost Regions: Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Réunion, Mayotte and Saint-Martin (France); the Azores and Madeira (Portugal); and the Canary Islands (Spain).

We do not consider the nationality of the founder. It all depends on where your company is legally established - that is the eligibility criteria. The company must be registered and established in an EU Member State or a Horizon Europe Pillar III Associated Country for at least six months and a maximum of five years from the time of submission to the eligibility cut-off. The full list of eligible countries is available on our Guidelines for Applicants and in the FAQs.

To apply, your company must have been officially registered and established at least six months before the eligibility cut-off date you are submitting to.. You must meet all eligibility criteria, including the registration date of the company. No exceptions will be made. 

Being "registered" means that your company has been officially recorded on a government registry or database, confirming its legal existence as a business entity. This will be verified by means of the date of the certificate of registration of the company in the national business register.

For the interest of equal treatment of all prospective applicants, Women TechEU can only consider the age of the startup from the official date of establishment and registration, and count backwards from the eligibility cut-off date that you are submitting to. Applicants must meet all eligibility criteria, including the registration date of the company. No exceptions will be made, even to extend the age range by just one day.

A company’s activity is not an eligibility criteria. We can only consider the legal incorporation date of the company, and count backwards from the eligibility cut-off date that you are submitting to.

We can only consider the legal incorporation date of the company, and count backwards from the eligibility cut-off date that you are submitting to. Changes that occur during the company’s operations are not taken into consideration.

Under Horizon Europe, a 'startup' should be understood as an SME in the early stage of its life cycle, including those that are created as spin-offs from university research activities, which aims to find innovative solutions and scalable business models. 

Early-stage refers to the phase of startup development generally preceding the rapid growth phase. For the purpose of the Women TechEU topic, we consider the following criteria to define an early-stage startup: 

• startups that have been established and operating for not more than 5 years from the eligibility cut-off date they are submitting for, ,
• startups that have raised limited funding (up to less than 1 million EUR in equity at submission date for eligibility strand), 
• before reaching high fidelity MVP (Minimum Viable Product), currently in a development stage between TRL4 and TRL6 (both inclusive).  This means before reaching TRL7. Check this Self-assessment tool if you’re unsure of your TRL level.

These criteria are part of the eligibility check and are grounds for exclusion. Applicants must comply with all the eligibility criteria.

No, neither a partner nor linked enterprise are eligible to Women TechEU. The company data will be checked at the moment of the legal validation when the relevant information about the structure of the company and its group needs to be provided.

The concept refers to products that are still in the development phase and have not yet reached a fully refined and market-ready state. In other words, the programme aims to support startups that are still in the process of refining their product. A company will be seen as complying with this criteria if it is between TRL4 and TRL6 (both inclusive). Applications with solutions at TRL 7 or above will be considered after Minimum Viable Product and are therefore ineligible. Check this Self-assessment tool if you’re unsure of your TRL level.

It is up to the applicant to determine what stage their deep tech technology has reached. The Helpdesk cannot make this assessment. Check this Self-assessment tool if you’re unsure of your TRL level.

Women TechEU requires a minimum TRL 4 to apply for this call. The programme targets early-stage startups in their formative stage, so the focus is on innovations at lower TRL levels. The allowed TRL range is from TRL 4 to TRL 6 (both inclusive). Applications at TRL 3 or below are ineligible as they are considered too early stage. Companies at a stage development of TRL7 and above are considered to be after Minimum Viable Product phase.

It is possible that a company has different products, or major component additions/expansions to an existing product, which are at different TRL stages. We assess the TRL stage for the specific product being addressed in the application stage, not the company as a whole. Therefore having a product at MVP stage is not necessarily exclusionary, provided that the applicant is applying to develop another product or substantial deep tech component to an existing product, which is at TRL4-6. If developing an existing technology further, note that the development has to be substantive and not a minor streamlining.

The aim in this eligibility requirement is to ensure that the startups that are going to get funded by Women TechEU are not already well-funded themselves. Therefore investments in cash or equivalent are the ones counted towards the 1 Million €. This will include private equity investments from business angels or VCs, SAFE notes where the money is already available in the bank account of the startups, and convertible loans. What is NOT included are the investments of the co-founders themselves, sweat equity or public grants.

Private equity refers to ownership stakes in a company, whereas private funding may not necessarily entail equity ownership.

No. We would suggest that you look towards other funding instruments more suitable for more mature companies, like the EIC Accelerator. See FAQ below for a non-exhaustive list of other recommended funding opportunities that may be more suitable. 

Yes, since the less than 1 million € raised criteria does not include grants but only private equity investments. What is important however is to avoid double funding, which for Women TechEU is considered as having already been granted funding in previous Women TechEU calls or EIC Accelerator. All other grants from local, regional or European programmes are allowed.

For the purpose of this call, we accept women founders holding a top management position that could be known as either a C-Level Executive (CEO, CTO, CSO etc) or an equivalent executive position in the company such as Director, General Manager and similar. As long as the women founders currently have a decision-making role in the company, then they are eligible.

Women TechEU supports women in all their diversity. Within Women TechEU, the term 'woman' refers to a cis or transgender woman who is legally defined as a woman. The means of verification will be the Identity Card or Passport issued by the country of their nationality.

If you are legally recognised as the founder or co-founder of the company in a Member State or Associated Country, you are eligible to apply for Women TechEU. A co-founder is defined as either one of the original shareholders at the time of incorporation, or as a shareholder whose name was added within one year from the official company registration date. You should be able to provide proof of your status as founder or co-founder by either showing the official list of shareholders or via another similar document provided by your national company registry.

Yes. In order to apply to Women TechEU, the founder of the company must also currently hold a top management position (CEO, CTO, CSO, or equivalent position) within that same company.

There can be only one applicant per company. However, if there are two or more women co-founders, these can be mentioned in the team. For administrative reasons you must nominate one person to be the ‘lead applicant’, representing your company towards the programme. We suggest that you choose wisely and include the applicant with the most shares and higher management position. In the Full proposal application form please describe all profiles, submit all of your CVs (and preferably also the rest of the team), and you can also record the video together. Should you be selected for funding, during the programme of services, you may both attend and participate in the support services. Please note however that  we will recognise only the lead applicant in our communications in the media and in our Data-Hub portal.

At the moment of submission, women must hold at least 25% of the shares of the company and should be indicated in the Capitalization table in the application form. However, it is not necessary that you as the woman co-founder hold at least 25% of the shares yourself in their entirety. All shares held by any and all women in the company will be counted towards this 25% minimum. 

In the Capitalization table, you will be asked to indicate all shareholders, starting with the lead applicant, the amount of shares they hold, and provide the gender of the individual. When completing the CAP table, if the founder or investor is a holding company owned by a single woman, please enter gender as woman, otherwise, select Organisation.

The full current CAP table (shareholders list) will need to be given at the eligibility application stage. In total the shareholding percentages will need to add up to 100% and the total of all the women shareholders need to be 25% or more. You will need to indicate the gender of the shareholders (where applicable). You will also need to list the name of the shareholder (instead of listing them as “shareholder 1”, “shareholder 2”...). 

In the case of holding companies: If the founder or investor is a holding company owned by a single woman, please enter gender as woman, otherwise, select Organisation.

Not necessarily, the guidelines say “Women legally recognized as founders or co-founder of the company. The founder or co-founder of the company must also currently hold a top management position (CEO, CTO, CSO or equivalent) within the same company. It will be also required that women hold at least 25% of the shares in the CAP table (capitalization table) of the company”. This means at least a 25% of the shares need to be jointly owned by women, not necessarily the same co-founder/founder & CEO, CTO, CSO or equivalent owning this percentage, as different women could own that amount all together.

Yes, this is permissible, as long as the holding company is fully owned by the women applicants.

Deep tech innovation aims to provide concrete solutions to our societal problems by finding its source in a deep interaction with the most recent scientific and technological advances and by seeking to produce a profound impact in the targeted application areas.

Deep tech: refers to technology-based innovation grounded in substantial scientific or engineering advances, requiring continuous interaction with cutting-edge research, technological development and/or complex engineering challenges, and aiming to generate significant impact in its target application area. The use, integration or minor adaptation of existing or standard technologies, without advancing the underlying technology itself, shall not be considered sufficient to qualify as deep tech.

Sectors which are most fertile for deep tech applications are: Advanced connectivity, navigation and digital technologies; Advanced materials, manufacturing and recycling technologies; Advanced sensing technologies; AI technologies; Biotechnologies; Energy technologies; Quantum technologies; Robotics and autonomous systems; Space and propulsion technologies. However, this list is not exhaustive and does not preclude an application from another sector. We welcome applications from all deep tech fields of activity.        

Ideally, the technology can also be scaled efficiently and reach a broad audience, although this is not a defining characteristic and a technology that is not easily scalable can still be deep tech. 

If your deep tech innovation includes AI, please note that the stage of development of your AI will be the determining factor of whether you are eligible or not for the Women TechEU programme. See next FAQ below.

No, utilising AI does not necessarily mean you’re automatically a deep tech company as per Women TechEU’s definition of deep tech (see above). If your deep tech innovation includes AI, the stage of development of your AI will be the determining factor of whether you are eligible or not for the Women TechEU programme. There are 7 stages identified as follows:

1. Concept development
2. Dataset collection
3. Algorithm development
4. AI model development
5. Training of AI model with dataset
6. Testing / piloting of trained AI model
7. Refinement of AI model post testing / piloting

Choosing stages (a) Concept development, (b) Dataset collection, or (c) Algorithm development, will make your application INELIGIBLE as this would mean that you are still too early in the actual AI development.

Using technology and being a deep tech company are very different concepts. Just because one is adopting industry standard technologies or slightly modifying content, materials, integration of existing components etc, does not make the company a deep tech one. A deep tech company is one that is advancing science, it is creating new technology in a ground breaking way to provide solutions to societal problems. 

For way of example, the following are NOT deep tech – e-learning platforms where the content is the innovative part and not the technology, ecommerce apps where the innovation is the business model/pricing and not the technology, gaming apps which use industry standard components, online information portals where the news and articles are the innovative component etc

No, there is not, as the call needs to be fair and equitable for all applicants and this is why we have issued clear rules and eligibility issues. The criteria for the calls are fixed. The final decision on whether a certain situation fits with the criteria as defined always rests with the evaluators.

To ensure fair and equal treatment of all the applicants, we have to remain impartial. Therefore, we are not allowed to give any comments or guidance on your application/idea, nor to give individual assessments or advice to potential applicants. Evaluation of all proposals will be done by independent evaluators.

To ensure fair and equal treatment of all the applicants, we have to remain impartial. The Women TechEU consortium and Helpdesk cannot make a pre-assessment or determine on your behalf whether your company qualifies as deep tech. Applicants are responsible for reviewing the eligibility criteria and guidelines, and the definition of deep tech as qualified there, and assessing whether their company and innovation meet the requirements before submitting an application.

Since we cannot pre-evaluate proposals without receiving all the details, if there is a grey area, we always suggest that the application is submitted, and this is why we are engaging experts from both technological and business sectors that will then give the final decision on the matter. The Full Proposal application form is very lean, and it will not take too long for the startups to fill it in if they already have existing materials like business plans and a pitch deck.

There are a number of differences between the two projects. For applicants, perhaps the main differences will be: (1) adjustments in the eligibility criteria; (2) the updated two-phase application process; (3) the increased focus on Widening countries and territories, with 40% of the budget now reserved for Widening applicants, and (4) the programme of services that will be provided to beneficiaries has been substantially strengthened. The main differences between each iteration of the project are tracked in the /about/history of WTEU section.

The important thing for applicants to know is that all information will be made available on the Guidelines for Applicants.

If Women TechEU is not the right scheme for your context, we recommend that you look towards other sources of funding and funding opportunities: 

• Other cascade funding opportunities 
• Over 40+ EU funded programmes! Of particular relevance: Digital Europe, Horizon Europe, EU4Health, LIFE … search all funding calls by keyword here
• Eureka Programme - Eurostars 
• EIC Accelerator (for more advanced companies) 
• Women TechEU’s Funding Agency website:
  https://eismea.ec.europa.eu/index_en

We also recommend that you check out your national R&I agencies and National Contact Points for national or decentralised funding opportunities.