Innovation Funding
Public funding for AI, built into the project plan
National and European innovation programs exist to reduce the financial risk of ambitious technology work. The challenge is rarely whether funding exists — it's whether a project is structured to qualify for it without funding timelines dictating engineering timelines. That structuring is what we do.
The programs we work with
- STEP R&D&I
- Support for research, development, and innovation projects — aimed at technology with a genuine R&D component: new algorithms, novel automation architectures, or AI systems that go beyond off-the-shelf integration. Co-financing is structured around eligible R&D costs, including engineering time.
- STEP Productive Innovation
- Support for projects that apply innovation to production and business processes — automation, digitalization, and AI adoption that measurably improves how a company operates. Suited to enterprise automation and AI workflow projects with a clear productivity or competitiveness case.
Funding Structuring
Funding reduces cost — it never gates delivery
Funding eligibility is assessed alongside technical scope, not after it. Engineering work is sequenced so critical-path development is never blocked purely on a funding decision.
How we structure projects to reduce financial risk
Public funding rarely covers 100% of a project, and it never arrives on the same schedule engineering does. Treating funding as an afterthought is how most technology projects lose months waiting on decisions they could have planned around. We take the opposite approach: funding eligibility is assessed at the same time as technical scope, so the project plan already accounts for what is likely to be co-financed, what needs to be funded directly, and what can start immediately regardless of application timelines.
- Eligibility Assessment
- We map the proposed technical work against STEP R&D&I and STEP Productive Innovation criteria (and other applicable instruments) before committing to a project shape.
- Application Structuring
- Applications are written to reflect the real engineering plan — milestones, deliverables, and costs that hold up under review, not generic boilerplate.
- Execution Independent of Approval
- Engineering work is sequenced so critical-path development is never blocked purely on a funding decision — funding reduces cost, it does not gate delivery.
From opportunity assessment to execution
Every engagement starts with the same question: what is the smartest way to execute this project, given its technical requirements, budget, and the funding instruments realistically available? That assessment determines whether STEP R&D&I, STEP Productive Innovation, another program, or straightforward private funding is the right fit — and it shapes the engineering plan from the first milestone.
From the blog
Funded innovation in practice: structuring ambitious projects so the numbers work
Public funding is not free money and not a lottery. It is a structuring decision that determines whether ambitious projects get built at all. How to do it right.
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The EU will fund your AI. Most companies never ask.
Europe's STEP agenda points public money straight at AI and deep tech — through instruments most operators never open. How funded structuring changes the economics of building.
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Why we build ambitious technology in Portugal
Ambitious projects die on spreadsheets, not whiteboards. Portugal fixes the spreadsheet: senior talent, EU home field, and funding that de-risks the build.
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