Your journey starts here

How does the €125M challenge work?

€125M non-dilutive funding for 10 teams following three stages:

We host a series of events in major cities across Europe where you can learn more about the initiative, hear from Frontier AI experts, and connect with potential partners in person. Whether you're looking for tech expertise, strategic thinking, or operational experience, this is where you find the right team.

1. Proposal + pitch: up to 10 teams selected

• Set up a European legal entity for your team
• Submit your application by May 29th 2026
• Pitch your idea to the jury in June 2026

The jury then selects up to 10 teams to enter the funded build phase.

2. Funded build phase (July 2026–Autumn 2028)

The 10 selected teams get serious funding, compute and hands-on support. This is real lab-building capital, not a stipend.

You move through staged gates with down-selection until up to 3 winners remain.

At each gate, the jury looks at research agenda, metrics, infra, MLOps, evals, safety, and early pilots.

3. Outcome of the challenge

The goal is not a single winning lab, but up to 3 venture-ready labs with pilots, eval suites, infra, teams, and investment-grade data rooms.

What you can expect

• Competition meets collaboration: you run in parallel with other labs, see what they're doing, sometimes share insights – and still push to outrun them.
• Freedom over bureaucracy: we cut paperwork where we can. Funding follows progress, not slide decks.
• Results drive decisions: if your system learns faster, scales better, or shifts real-world metrics, you advance.

Applications open in May and close on 29 May 2026. Join the waitlist for updates, announcements – and a heads-up when applications open.