300 niche grants per year that most founders never see
Last week, during the EIB Group Forum, one of the sessions again turned to the question of European funding for innovation — and the same challenge discussed years ago remains unchanged today: the EU funding landscape is still highly fragmented and difficult for founders to navigate, while Europe now more than ever needs more founders building ambitious technology ventures.
Most founders looking for European funding follow the same path:
EIC Accelerator
Horizon Europe flagship calls
Maybe ERC or national innovation grants
The result is predictable: thousands of applicants chasing the same few programs.
But the reality is very different.
Across the EU ecosystem, there are roughly 300 niche funding calls every year that most founders never see — not because they are secret, but because they are buried across fragmented programs, joint undertakings, and cascade funding schemes.
If you understand where to look, the competition drops dramatically.
This article maps the hidden layers of EU funding.
Why Most Founders Only See 10% of the Funding Landscape
The EU does not run one centralized grant system.
Instead, funding is distributed across multiple institutional layers:
Horizon Europe
Joint Undertakings
Digital Europe Programme
European Structural Funds
Cascade funding from EU projects
Most founders monitor only the first.
That leaves a huge amount of funding essentially invisible.
Layer 1 — Horizon Europe Niche Calls
Horizon Europe is widely known, but most founders only track a few headline instruments.
In reality, each work programme contains dozens of smaller thematic calls.
Examples include:
AI governance tools
quantum benchmarking frameworks
semiconductor ecosystem coordination
photonic computing research
digital twin infrastructure
These calls often fund €1–4M projects and receive far fewer proposals than flagship programs.
Why they are missed:
buried inside 200-page work programmes
obscure call identifiers
little marketing.
Layer 2 — Joint Undertakings
Joint Undertakings are EU public-private partnerships running their own funding calls.
Examples include:
semiconductor innovation programs
next-generation telecom infrastructure
high-performance computing development.
These calls can fund:
advanced chips
AI infrastructure
photonics
quantum hardware.
Because they operate outside the main Horizon portal structure, many founders never monitor them.
Yet these programs often distribute hundreds of millions of euros annually.
Layer 3 — Digital Europe Programme
While Horizon focuses on research, Digital Europe funds the deployment and adoption of digital technologies.
This includes:
AI training and adoption programs
cybersecurity infrastructure
digital innovation hubs
AI testing facilities.
For startups and consultancies working on AI governance, compliance, or implementation, this programme is often a better fit than research grants.
Competition is also lower because many research teams ignore it.
Layer 4 — Structural and Regional Innovation Funding
Another overlooked layer is the EU structural funding ecosystem.
Through regional innovation programs, the EU finances:
AI innovation hubs
semiconductor labs
research infrastructure
digital training initiatives.
These programs are managed at the regional or national level, which means they rarely appear on the typical EU funding radar.
Yet they represent billions of euros in investment.
Layer 5 — Cascade Funding
Perhaps the most overlooked mechanism is cascade funding.
Here is how it works:
The EU funds a large consortium project.
That project distributes smaller grants through open calls.
Typical grants range from:
€50,000
to €300,000
sometimes higher.
These calls are designed specifically for startups and SMEs, and the application process is usually much simpler than standard EU grants.
Because they are hosted on project websites rather than central portals, many founders never discover them.
Why These Opportunities Matter
While not all the programmes can be mentioned at once, the difference between visible and hidden funding opportunities is competition.
A flagship EU grant might receive thousands of applications.
A niche coordination or infrastructure call might receive fewer than twenty proposals.
Cascade calls sometimes attract fewer than fifty applicants across Europe.
For founders willing to navigate the ecosystem, the odds improve dramatically.
The Real Skill: Navigating the System
Winning EU funding is less about luck and more about understanding how the system works.
The key is monitoring multiple layers simultaneously:
Horizon research topics
Joint undertaking programs
Digital Europe initiatives
regional innovation funds
cascade funding opportunities.
Together, these sources produce hundreds of funding opportunities every year that most founders never encounter.
Why I Built NORTHGRANTSEU
Because the EU funding ecosystem is highly fragmented, discovering relevant calls often requires monitoring dozens of different portals, programmes, and institutional websites.
To make this easier for me to begin with, I built a simple navigator that aggregates funding opportunities across the European innovation landscape. As I increasingly work with AI tools, the idea emerged to experiment with a practical solution — a lightweight way to bring scattered public information into one place. It is not perfect, but it provides a useful starting point and a general overview based on publicly available sources.
Instead of relying only on a handful of widely known programmes, founders can explore a broader set of funding opportunities that support Europe’s innovation ecosystem right off the bat.
It also creates a clearer starting point in my work for more focused discovery discussions with potential candidates around funding pathways, partner mapping, and project regulatory alignment.
Final Thought
The biggest mistake founders make is assuming EU funding is limited to a few flagship programs.
In reality, the system is far larger — and far more complex.
For those willing to navigate it, the opportunity is substantial.
Some of the most interesting grants in Europe are not the ones everyone talks about.
They are the ones hidden in plain sight.
Liene Daktina
Northglow Luxembourg
Independent consulting for EU projects and innovators
