IMPACT GROWTH will fund 4 European Superstar Startups (unicorn potential) confirmed by top VC investors and global corporates of 4 smart verticals: cities, digital content, agrifood and factories 48 companies exploiting Future Internet research results will be discovered out of a deal flow of 5.000 startups through 4 OpenCalls. They will join an acceleration programme and will start a crowdfunding track. A “live due diligence” from the acceleration and the market response through the crowd will select the best companies. 4 out of the 48 startups will succeed in reaching the 1.5 million euros crowd funded investment led by the VCs and platforms in the consortium leveraging the 6 million euros of public funding with 6 additional million euros of private investment. The IMPACT GROWTH consortium includes: Mobile World Congress as the reference digital mobile event in the planet; 4 corporates including Danone, Ferrovial, NTT DOCOMO BuonGiorno and MADE (integrates LEGO and Vestas among others); FIWARE Foundation to guarantee the proper exploitation of research results aligning them with other FIWARE initiatives; Accelerace and Kibo Ventures as top VCs; ISDI as leading FIWARE accelerator; FundingBox as leading European startups funding platform; INVESDOR as first global crowdfunded platform with MiFID license and ISDI Mexico that will reinforce EC objectives of globalizing the Future Internet efforts via Mexico and as a pilot on how to engage with Plug & Play and Tel Aviv Go Global joining the project via LoI; PARP, the agency for startups in Poland, will support the consortium via LoI to pilot the adoption of best practices for ESIF purposes under Smart Specialization Strategies for regions. IMPACT GROWTH will help demonstrate that public funded research results with a “continuity” approach (continued support from seed to initial series round) can help top startups become European Superstars and can turn the EU into the EU of "entrepreneurial states".

The high-performance requirements requested by the industry and consumers are responsible that currently 17% of total plastic packaging is multilayer material , meaning 3.03 Mt of plastics. Difficulties for recycling it are accentuated, being mostly landfilled or incinerated. MERLIN project has joined a partnership between sorting technology providers, recyclers, research centers, social innovation experts and end-users to design cradle to cradle solutions. This 36-month research project will offer innovative solutions for all the processes required to increase the quality and rate of recycled plastic materials coming from multi-layer packaging waste: (i) SORTING (combining optical sensors, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and robotics), (ii) DELAMINATION (optimizing depolymerisation and using solvent-based processes), (iii) RECYLING (techniques for repolymerization and upcycling of polymers) and (iv) VALIDATION (developing rigid and flexible packaging solutions and demonstrating circularity of the processes). These solutions will be developed and later validated in a real environment to reach technology readiness level (TRL) 6. This will be complemented with additional techniques and tools for circularity design to increase knowledge and effectiveness in the closure of the European multilayer plastic chain. Finally, transversal activities related to regulation and standardization, safety, sustainability, business, training, dissemination and communication will support to maximize the impact and effectiveness of the project. These actions are aligned with the ones proposed by the European Plastic Strategy to achieve that by 2030 all plastic packaging should be designed to be recyclable or reusable and decrease the quantity of waste generated Potential annual carbon footprint saving that could be achieved recycling all the multilayer waste in Europe could reach 7.42 Mt CO2/year, with a potential economic of €10,605 million and more 106,000 new job positions.

VOLATILE aims in the development of an innovative Volatile Fatty Acids Platform for the bioconversion of municipal solid bio-waste fraction and sludgy biowaste from other industries. The platform will be integrated in anaerobic digestion. The volatile fatty acids will be recovered continuously using sophisticated membrane technology and will be provided as feedstock / carbon source for value added fermentation approaches such as biopolymer PHA to be tested in material applications, single cell oil as precursor for oleochemical industry as well as long chain unsaturated health-promoting Omega-3 fatty acids to be used as food ingredient or nutraceutical. PHA will be obtained by bacterial fermentations, single cell oil from yeast cultivation and Omega-3 fatty acids via heterotrophic microalgae. The process development will be accompanied with sophisticated LCA study in order to ensure environmental friendly process design. The project will also work on solutions to typical barriers beside others such as quality requirements, continuous and sufficient feedstock supply or interaction between members of value chain using agent-based modelling. Also the effect of legal stimuli and restrictions and subsidies and taxes will be studied and a link between product requirements and markets will be established. VOLATILE will prepare a Roadmap indicating future research needs but also giving suggestion for legislative improvements. A CEN workshop will be initiated to discuss with external stakeholders rules for the VFAP & to set up standard requirements in the form of a CEN workshop Agreement.

GREEN.DAT.AI aims to channel the potential of AI towards the goals of the European Green Deal, by developing novel Energy-Efficient Large-Scale Data Analytics Services, ready-to-use in industrial AI-based systems, while reducing the environmental impact of data management processes. GREEN.DAT.AI will demonstrate the efficiencies of the new analytics services in four industries (Smart Energy, Smart Agriculture/Agri-food, Smart Mobility, Smart Banking) and six different application scenarios, leveraging the use of European Data Spaces. The ambition is to exploit mature (TRL5 or higher) solutions already developed in recent H2020 projects and deliver an efficient, massively distributed, open-source, green, AI/FL - ready platform, and a validated go-to-market TRL7/8 Toolbox for AI-ready Data Spaces. The services will cover AI-enabled data enrichment, Incentive mechanisms for Data Sharing, Synthetic Data Generation, Large-scale learning at the Edge/Fog, Federated & Auto ML at the edge/fog, Explainable AI/Feature Learning with Privacy Preservation, Federated & Automatic Transfer Learning, Adaptive FL for Digital Twin Applications, Automated IoT event-based change detection/forecasting. The GREEN.DAT.AI Consortium consists of a multidisciplinary group of 17 partners from 10 different countries (and one associated party), well balanced in terms of expertise. The vast majority of partners already have key roles in a number of projects funded under the Big Data PPP (ICT-16-2017) topic, namely BigDataStack, CLASS, Track & Know, and I-BiDaaS and are serving as active members of the BDVA/DAIRO Association, FIWARE, AIOTI, and ETSI. In addition, partners come from a variety of sectors, such as banking, mobility, energy, and agriculture, constituting a representative workforce of their respective domains, which will contribute to industry adoption and stimulate uptake in other sectors as well.

Connected Car will fund 2 European Superstars and 64 Disruptive SMEs in the Connected Car OpenSpace by 5 European Cluster and 2 global ecosystems with the support of 10 Global Corporations and 4 pioneering startups. An acceleration and smartization virtuous cycle methodology in the OpenSpace with vehicle, infrastructure and device & TelCo interactions and consumer & business services across 6 industrial value chains (Mobility, Automotive, Electronics, ICT, Services and Infrastructure) will lead to Value Link-Chains. The Connected Car consortium consists of CTAG, Mov´eo, INSERO, MSAK and LPNT as Gold+ clusters and PSA Citröen, Ferrovial and FIWARE Foundation (Telefonica, Orange and Atos) as Corporations; Mobile World Capital as the world´s best digital event out of Barcelona; ISDI as the world´s first native digital Business School; and FundingBox as the European leading platform for SMEs funding will guarantee excellent implementation. FIA Region 1 out of Brussels leverages the OpenSpace to a LivingLab with 112 Mobility Clubs and 38 Million of drivers. Argus, Hevo, Botcar and Little are the pioneering connected car startups that will collaborate in the disruption discovery process. PARP, the Polish Agency for SME Development and 19 regional ecosystems will ensure the Connected Car OpenSpace is aligned with ESIF and Smart Specialization to guarantee sustainability across the territories. Beyond the 4 million euro support for the SMEs within the project, Connected Car will seek private funding of 4 million euros and 1 million euros of mobilized ESIF. For this purpose, the “ Connected Car Label” will be instrumental. Connected Car will demonstrate that public clusterization and disruption discovery with key Innovation actors (SMEs) and proper corporate engagement develops Emerging Industries and builds the EU of "entrepreneurial states”.