AIRISE Open Call 5 Pilots
Funding opportunity for European SMEs and midcaps to scale up AI applications in manufacturing to enhance sustainability and resilience.
AIRISE helps European SMEs and mid-caps integrate AI into manufacturing by supporting projects from idea to real-world testing. AI applications must enhance sustainability, improve process resilience, or make manufacturing jobs more inclusive and user-friendly.
Type of projects to be funded: AIRISE will fund industrial AI Pilot Applications aimed at scaling up AI solutions in manufacturing environments (TRL5-6 at start, and progress 1-2 levels). The projects should contribute to sustainability, resilience, and efficiency while reducing waste and energy consumption. Applicants must demonstrate prior AI experience and propose a well-defined business case.
AIRISE aims to conduct so called “experiments” to support European manufacturing SME’s and mid-caps to develop their idea of using artificial intelligence at their manufacturing shop floor, to support manufacturing SMEs with prior positive experience in AI to scale up use of AI solutions in their shopfloor towards improving sustainability and/or resilience of their businesses. Each proposal needs to describe the business case that drives the experiment.
AIRISE offers AI related services through its services area (more details in Annex 1 in the guidelines for applicants). Each applicant needs to describe its lack of knowledge, the selected services and how the selected services are expected to close these knowledge gaps. The proposal needs to define an “Experimentation Plan” for this.
Sectors / domain: Manufacturing, Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence applications in industrial processes.
Individual or consortium: Open to individual SMEs and midcaps.
Specific eligibility requirements:
- Applicants must be legal entities, SMEs or Midcaps, with a PIC number, based in the EU or associated countries.
- Scale-up an AI driven manufacturing solution which is at TRL5-6 at start, and should progress one to two levels in the project.
- The AI solution must be implemented in a European manufacturing environment.
- Subcontracting should be minimal (≤15% of total costs).
Specific topics or challenges: the AI application must address at least one of the following:
- Sustainability: Reduce energy consumption, carbon footprint, and waste.
- Resilience: Improve agility and security of manufacturing processes.
- Workplace attractiveness: Enhance human-machine interaction for better working conditions.
Projects duration: expected duration of 8 to 14 months, structured in three phases: Initialisation, Implementation, and Validation.
Budget, funding rates and payment conditions:
Funding rate: 70% of eligible costs (direct costs + 25% overhead).
Budget conditions / limitations: Maximum funding €60,000 per applicant.
Payments:
- 30% upon approval of the Initialisation Report.
- 40% after approval of the Implementation Report.
- 30% upon approval of the Validation Report.
Submission deadline: Two cut-off dates:
- 31 March 2025, 17:00 CET
- 30 June 2025, 17:00 CET
Links
Closes
31/03/2025
Max funding per project
60.000€