Building the Next Generation of Digital Champions

In 2024, EIT Digital focused on enhancing entrepreneurial education, aiming to equip participants with a blend of technical knowledge and entrepreneurial skills. Each programme is tailored to develop talents, nurturing their abilities to drive innovation and address Europe's digital transformation challenges.

Our short-term goal is to increase the intake of eligible applicants, recruit new students efficiently, and enhance the scholarship programmes. In the long term, EIT Digital aspires to create a robust innovation ecosystem, scaling ventures, and upskilling talents with digital and entrepreneurial competencies. This vision is realized through an integrated innovation funnel, focusing on venture creation from research, scaling startups into industry leaders, and sustaining the innovation portfolio through equity in ventures created. Both EIT Digital Incubation and Growth Services helped our students and graduates to turn their business ideas first into minimum-viable products, then ventures and get these to fly.

In 2024, the EIT Digital Master School continued to provide eight EIT Labelled programmes, utilizing the expertise of the 17 EIT Digital Master School programme partner universities to develop engineers equipped to drive innovation. Among them was a new member university, the Riga Technical University (Latvia). Additionally EIT Digital member University of the Aegean (Greece) is preparing to welcome students in autumn 2025, followed by three more universities in 2026.

A total of 235 students graduated from the EIT Digital Master School in 2024. The annual graduation ceremony was organised in November in Budapest together with EIT Digital’s long-time partner Bosch in its premises. This was the first time for this concept which also was highly appreciated both by the graduates and Bosch. Encouraged by the good experience we are looking to continue this practice.

EIT Digital Master School recruited 237 new students to cohort 2024. The semester kicked off in Riga in October at the Riga Technical University. The overall admission rate for the cohort 2024 was 64%. Slightly over half of the new students were citizens of EU/ETA countries, and one-third female.

More than 70% of the newly recruited students were offered some type of funding option. The merit-based scholarships for cohort 2024 consist of 100%, 50% and 30% tuition fee waivers sponsored by EIT Digital and the SPECTRO Digital Europe programme scholarships for citizens of EU/EEA member countries studying in Autonomous Systems and Intelligent Robots or Cybersecuity programmes. Additional funding types offered were the European Innovation Fund (EIF) Deferred Tuition Payment Plan, as well as additional waivers and allowances offered by the partner universities.

In 2024, we strengthened our portfolio of the EIT-labelled education programmes with two new ones, EIT Digital SPIN and EIT Digital Speed Master. After this, the EIT Digital family of EIT-labelled education, skills and entrepreneurship programmes consists of EIT Digital Master School, and under the Deep-tech Venture Building Programme -umbrella, EIT Digital Summer School, EIT Digital Professional School, EIT Digital SPIN, and EIT Digital Speed Master programmes. The EIT Label serves as a mark of quality and a valuable marketing asset in the increasingly competitive global education landscape.

The 2024 EIT Digital Summer School Programme included five two-week programmes for EIT Digital Master School students and six one-week programmes for external participants. A total of 264 participants attended the Summer Schools (163 Master School students and 101 external participants).

In 2024, EIT Digital’s strategy in non-degree education included delivering high-quality, targeted training for professional and academic audiences. SPIN Explore and SPIN Rise exemplify this through their focus on foundational business skills, intellectual property valorisation, and venture creation. Two SPIN pilots were delivered. SPIN Explore online training programme with modules covering critical topics such as commercialisation pathways and scientific storytelling attracted 102 participants. A total of 32 participants attended the SPIN Rise hybrid programme combining an in-person boot camp and online mentoring.

In 2024, EIT Digital’s Professional School continued strengthening its focus on real-time online short courses, addressing upskilling needs in Artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digital transformation. The school expanded its bespoke training offerings for businesses and public institutions, securing a key milestone with a tailored AI training programme for the European Union Agencies Network (EUAN). This move reinforced our ability to provide sector-specific digital education solutions.

Our Coursera MOOC portfolio continued its steady growth, with 28,510 unique learners in 2024 - a 10% increase from the previous year - while completion rates doubled, demonstrating the impact of content refinements and engagement strategies. The Essentials series remained a core component of the Professional School’s strategy, offering structured short courses that equip professionals with foundational knowledge in AI, cybersecurity, and other emerging digital fields. Additionally, a new Cybersecurity Essentials series was introduced.

In addition, the EIT Digital Professional School contributed to the EU-funded Digital Europe programme projects, notably SME4DD. In its second year in 2024, the programme trained SMEs for the Digital Decade with eight short-term courses in cybersecurity, AI, and blockchain, along with a longer Executive Programme tailored for SMEs navigating digital transformation.

Through the CICERONE project, awarded in 2024, the school also supported the development of a cybersecurity academy training portfolio and interface. These initiatives reinforce EIT Digital’s potential long-term impact by creating sustainable and scalable training solutions that extend beyond individual project lifecycles.

The EIT Digital Venture Incubation Programme was executed for the seventh consecutive year in twelve regional editions in 2024 and covered 22 Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) countries and two non-RIS countries (Sweden and Germany). The programme helped 60 innovator teams from 24 countries to finalize their minimum viable product (MVP) and start their venture.

EIT Digital Innovation Factory (OIF) has been one of the legacy cornerstones for EIT Digital to boost innovation in Europe using digital technologies. It fulfils its mission mainly through the selected Innovation Activities, which have been embedded in the EIT Digital European ecosystem. The activities receive resources, including the EIT financial support to build ventures, package technology, sign up customers and attract additional investors.

In 2024, EIT Digital run two Open Innovation Factory cut-offs during the year. The programme supported seven activities selected in the 2023 last cut-off from January to June 2024, and three 2024 cut-off 1 activities running from July to December 2024. Three additional projects were selected in the 2024 cut-off 2, with an execution timeframe from January to June 2025.

Both 2023 won Regional Innovation Valley project UNITE and 2024 won CyberSecDome projects offer innovation-focused calls for proposals for SMEs and startups. In December CyberSecDome launched its first call for SMEs and research teams to validate and test CyberSecDome’s prototype. A total of 54 submissions were received by the end of the submission period in February 2025. The first UNITE call for proposals is expected in 2025.

All Open Innovation Factory and Venture Incubation programme activities commit to contributing to EIT Digital’s long-term financial sustainability by offering an equity share in the incorporated venture in recognition of EIT Digital support. In 2024, EIT Digital’s equity portfolio efforts cantered on increasing the number and value of formalized equity positions and enhancing insights into the portfolio’s potential value. At the end of the year, EIT Digital hold equity commitments in more than 360 ventures.

In 2024, the Growth Service team supported a total of 118 companies, of which 35 under Access to Finance, 81 under Speed Master programme, and two in both programmes. In addition, a dozen companies signed from New European Bauhaus or European Innovation Council programmes in 2022 were supported by the team in 2024. EIT Growth Services organized two investor events in 2024 in parallel to Vivatech in Paris and Web Summit in Lisbon. The companies which were admitted to our Growth Services during 2024 did not raise funding yet in the same year in the challenging market situation, but several of the recently supported companies raised subsequent rounds of financing for a total value of €74M in 2024.

In 2024, the eleventh edition of the EIT Digital Champions scaleup competition was organized. The competition is the biggest pan-European contest for digital deep-tech scaleups awarding fourteen companies in 2024 with free-of-charge access to the EIT Digital Growth Services programme and to benefit from 12 months of dedicated support services in international Access to Finance and Business Development. The 2024 edition attracted 412 submissions, from 48 countries. Half of the applications came from companies led by women.

The EIT Digital Champions 2025 edition’s submission period was run during the second half of 2024 and resulted in 364 applications. More than half of them came from women-lead companies. The 2025 edition is sponsored by STMicroelectronics (automotive track) and GEA Digital (defence track). The winners will be announced in May 2025.

In 2024, we continued delivering the EIT Digital Speed Master online programme launched in 2023 and designed for entrepreneurs and executives to enhance their startup skills. The programme is a comprehensive executive training programme spanning three months, strategically crafted to equip entrepreneurs and their teams with fresh perspectives and insights. A total of 105 startups from 28 European countries attended the programme in 2024. One-third of the attendees were female. Attending the Speed Master was mandatory for activities selected to the EIT Digital Open Innovation Factory in 2024.

Inspired by strategic partnerships with some of our key industrial partners, like Bosch, T2, INDRA and STMicroelectronics, EIT Digital introduced a new exclusive platform in 2023, the Corporate Innovation Club. The club continued building and strengthening its activities in 2024 by having two face-to-face meetings, one in Budapest and Milan, and two online meetings. Corporates Terna and Almaviva joined the club as new members in 2024.