Challenge-Driven GenAI4EU Booster in Apply AI prioritised sectors (RIA) (AI/Data/Robotics Partnership)

Expected Outcome

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Significant technology progress and innovation through challenge-driven approach in the fields of aerospace, pharma/drug development or telecommunication networks.
• Increased competitivity and visibility of the Generative AI community in Europe, in demonstrating their capability to achieve challenging tasks within the aerospace, pharma/drug development or telecommunication sectors.
• Increased adoption of Generative AI in aerospace, pharma/drug development or telecommunication networks through tangible progress and achievement demonstrated via the challenge-driven process.

Scope

Generative AI (GenAI) promises to transform most industry sectors. This challenge-driven initiative aims to boost both Europe’s developer community and the adoption of powerful trustworthy generative AI solutions in the strategic sectors of aerospace, pharma/drugs and telecommunication networks, key for their competitiveness. In pharmaceuticals, it can, for instance, accelerates drug design by rapidly creating target-specific molecules, reducing development time from years to seconds, and potentially preventing prolonged health crises like COVID-19. In aerospace, generative AI can for instance optimize aircraft design, streamline manufacturing processes, predict maintenance needs through sensor data analysis, route optimisation, and enhance pilot training with diverse, realistic simulations. By embracing generative AI, telecom companies can position themselves at the forefront of a new era of intelligent and automated telecommunications. Specific use-cases include for instance network management, network optimization, network slicing, network healing, predictive maintenance, network mapping and optimization.

Each proposal should focus exclusively on one of the three key sectors mentioned above: aerospace, pharma/drug development, or telecommunications and clearly specify which sector it addresses. Each proposal is expected to focus primarily on the definition, the organization of a multi-stage competition in the chosen sector, as well as the accompanying support to the companies/teams taking part in the challenges, and related activities to maximise the impact of the action.

User industry companies from the strategic sector targeted by the proposal should be core partners in the consortium. They should demonstrate a genuine interest in the projects results and therefore support the challenge participants - in order to reach the most powerful and exploitable results benefitting their industry. The expected results are pre-competitive but the proposal must include a draft exploitation plan outlining commitments on future exploitation. The consortium is responsible for the various stages of the challenges and should provide the necessary support resources during each stage of the competition, including technical assistance and business support to develop an exploitation strategy, but most importantly, provide to the competing FSTP recipients the data necessary to fine-tune models and build powerful solutions meeting industry needs.

Proposals should be driven by impactful use-cases where generative AI can make the difference: a number of industries from the targeted sector are expected to join forces to define challenging problems to solve with GenAI solutions, which then drive the rest of the project. Based on such challenges, the consortium organises a multi-staged competition with an increasing level of complexity. In the different stages (see below), third parties, either single SMEs or small team of organisations led by an SME, compete to address the challenges with GenAI solutions.

For each proposal:

• Stage 1 - Open call: The consortium launches an open call for proposals. A challenge, open to all, will allow to select for Stage 2 the 20 highest-ranked proposals, according to a pre-defined selection process and criteria. Each solution competing for the challenge can be submitted either by a single SME, developer of GenAI solutions, or a small team of organisations led by such SME
• Stage 2 - Competition among Stage 1 winners: The 20 teams or organisations selected from Stage 1 receive EUR 250 000 FSTP grant each in accordance with their successfully selected proposal (which addresses the tasks and challenges defined for this stage by the consortium). At the end of Stage 2, the 4 highest ranked solutions will be selected for the next stage according to a pre-defined selection process and criteria.
• Stage 3 - Grand finale (Competition among Stage 2 winners): The 4 teams or organisations selected from Stage 2 receive EUR 2,000,000 FSTP grants each in accordance with their successfully selected proposals to address the tasks and challenges for this stage. In conjunction, they will prepare for the grand finale that will identify the best performing solution at the end of Stage 3 according to the evaluation methodology defined by the consortium.

The consortium should define measures to support the winners in maximizing the impact and uptake of their solutions. For instance, after the end of the FSTP grant, the best performing team could be offered the opportunity to conclude partnerships or contracts with the user industries leading the consortium. Measures to support the broad uptake of their solutions in the whole sector should also be considered.

Such multi-staged scheme is expected to be implemented in parallel by the projects funded under this action, each addressing a different sector.

Each proposal, involving several major industry players, should define a clear methodology to implement the various steps of the approach, define the specifications of the stages of the competitions, timelines, targets, KPIs, a solid evaluation methodology including evaluation criteria. The main information should be in the proposal, in addition to all mandatory requirements as concerns financial support to third parties. The beneficiaries will also be in charge of implementing the evaluation methodology, and providing the necessary infrastructure/technical support for the participants to the challenges. The consortium members are also responsible for ensuring high visibility of the competitions.

The projects selected from this call, each addressing one of the three targeted sectors, are expected to collaborate among themselves, in order to make economies of scale in sharing best practices, defining processes for organising the challenges, ensuring efficient monitoring, organising dissemination and communication activities, etc. Such collaboration among the linked actions is expected to be formalised by a collaboration agreement, after the grant agreement signature.

For each proposal, an amount of EUR 5,000,000 is foreseen to be distributed among the winners of Stage 1, in form of FSTP grants, in order to prepare for Stage 2. In addition, a budget of EUR 8,000,000 is foreseen to be distributed among the winners of Stage 2, in the form of FSTP grants, to prepare for Stage 3 of the challenge.

The proposal is expected to make the case for such investment in defining the objectives with sufficient level of information. This amount will be distributed equally among the 4 winning teams of Stage 2, who are expected to develop further their solutions and compete for Stage 3.

Visibility would be important; therefore dissemination and communication campaigns are key. The proposers are also encouraged to seek sponsorship, which would be key for the visibility and prestige of their challenge, and to attract the best developers from the eligible countries to compete, particularly SMEs, alone or within a team competing for the challenges.

All proposals are expected to incorporate mechanisms for assessing and demonstrating progress, including qualitative and quantitative KPIs, benchmarking, and progress monitoring.

When possible, proposals should build on and reuse public results from relevant previous funded actions. Communicable results should be shared with the European R&D community through the AI-on-demand platform, and if necessary, other relevant digital resource platforms to bolster the European AI, Data, and Robotics ecosystem by disseminating results and best practices.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on AI, data and robotics (ADRA), and all proposals are expected to allocate tasks for cohesion activities with ADRA and the CSA HORIZON-CL4-2025-03-HUMAN-18: GenAI4EU central Hub.

Proposals should also build on or seek collaboration with relevant projects[1] and develop synergies with other relevant International, European, national or regional initiatives. Projects selected in this topic will link to the resources offered by the AI Factories, including the Data Labs. The results may be validated in the Testing and Experiment Facilities and further deployed via the European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs) and will contribute to the Apply AI strategy[2].

Technology Readiness Level - Technology readiness level expected from completed projects

Activities are expected to start at TRL 3 and achieve at least TRL6 by the end of the project - see General Annex B.

[1] In particular, proposals in telecommunication should exploit potential synergies with projects funded under HORIZON-CL4-2025-03-DATA-08, HORIZON-CL4-2025-03-DATA-09 and HORIZON-CL4-2025-04-DATA-02; proposals in pharma/drug should exploit potential synergies with relevant projects from Cluster 1 and IHI Innovative Health Initiative; proposals in the aerospace should exploit potential synergies with relevant projects from the clean aviation JU and other similar projects/initiatives.

[2] COM(2025) 723 Apply AI Strategy.