InnoEnergy and 28DIGITAL are due €19 million and €24 million in EIT grants for 2026 and 2027, according to Follow the Money, against the €44.0 million and €30.6 million the EIT allocated them for 2023 and 2024. Annualised, that is about 42% less. The cut is real, but so is the distance between the EIT’s label of financial sustainability and a programme goal that its own rules frame as independence from the EIT.
Across the two hubs, €43 million over two years is €21.5 million a year, against €37.3 million a year in 2023 and 2024. InnoEnergy’s annual allocation falls from €22 million to €9.5 million, 57% lower, and 28DIGITAL’s from €15.3 million to €12 million, 22% lower. The scopes differ: the earlier grants funded full KIC business plans, while the EIT’s 2025 annual activity report describes the memorandum grants as supporting education, regional innovation and coordination activities, with business creation added for 2026 and 2027. In 2025, the three first-wave KICs, including Climate KIC, signed grant agreements totaling €20 million, and the report says only two eligible proposals arrived for the 2026 to 2027 call, from InnoEnergy and 28Digital. The €19 million and €24 million figures come from Follow the Money’s reading of the grant agreements; the EIT documents reviewed do not state them.
The terminology is where the dispute sits. The EIT’s Governing Board approved memoranda of cooperation with the three KICs in June 2024, covering 2025 to 2027, and the EIT described the KICs as having reached year 15 in good financial health and remaining in its community as financially sustainable. Its annual report calls them self-sustaining members. 28DIGITAL’s own rebranding release said it “becomes independent.” The programme’s rules, as summarised by Bavaria’s research liaison agency BayFOR, require KICs to replace EIT investment with private and public funding and achieve long-term financial independence from the EIT within 15 years at the latest. That wording concerns independence from the EIT, not from public money, which is how the spokespeople quoted by Follow the Money defend the grants: independence means no longer relying on structural EIT funding, and sustainable organisations still receive grants for specific activities.
The accounting for the grants also keeps them out of the EIT’s headline numbers. The €978 million the EIT announced in October 2025 for 2026 to 2028 covers six other KICs, cross-KIC activities and the higher education initiative, which add up to that total, and the Governing Board’s decision states that grants under the first-wave memoranda are outside it, though the three first-wave KICs may also take part in the cross-KIC work. The €43 million therefore appears to be a separate line.
The two hubs’ finances, as reported by Follow the Money, show why the grants matter. 28DIGITAL’s revenue fell from €26 million in 2024 to €19 million in 2025, subsidies fell from €6 million to €2.5 million, and a €1.4 million profit became a €6.2 million loss; a spokesperson called the loss a normal adjustment year after a change in strategy. InnoEnergy reported a €52 million loss for 2024 and had not filed 2025 accounts, according to the same report. Neither set of figures was available in the sources reviewed. The EIT’s annual report notes that InnoEnergy completed investment rounds in 2023 and 2024 with investors including Engie, Société Générale and Siemens Financial Services that helped raise €155 million. 28DIGITAL’s 2024 annual report says that, on its own account, it secured 20 EU and national project proposals that year, bringing in €120 million in funding, and has mobilised more than €270 million in EU and national funding since 2022. Independence from the EIT, in other words, coexists with substantial use of other public programmes.
That matters for the €60 million Follow the Money says the three KICs received in 2025 from EU sources according to the EU funding database. The EIT’s own report puts its 2025 grants to the three at €20 million, which would leave the rest to other channels; Climate KIC alone, for example, has secured €99 million across 19 Horizon Europe Mission projects since 2021. The EIT’s total budget gives scale to the €6 billion Follow the Money cites for KIC funding since 2010: the EIT is receiving €2.965 billion under Horizon Europe for 2021 to 2027, and roughly €2.4 billion to €2.7 billion under Horizon 2020 depending on the source, which together come to about €5.4 billion to €5.7 billion, close to that figure, though those budgets also cover the EIT’s own operations and non-KIC programmes. A discrepancy in the hubs’ own accounts of past support is worth noting too: 28DIGITAL’s rebranding release put the funding it received from the EIT over 15 years at €1.1 billion, while the EIT’s announcement of the same event cited more than €650 million. Neither text explains the difference.
The oversight record gives context for how the EIT treats sustainability. The European Court of Auditors concluded in a 2016 special report that the financial sustainability of the KICs was doubtful and that the income KICs declared from outside the EIT had not been substantial. The EIT’s 2025 annual report puts the error rate on 2023 grants at 0.8%, below the 2% materiality threshold, but the Director’s declaration of assurance carries a reservation over five irregularities at KIC level that OLAF investigated, with the total financial exposure expected to stay below the €15 million to €20 million flagged the previous year. The report also records that EIT Manufacturing ASBL filed for liquidation in March 2026, six months after the Governing Board set an initial maximum EIT contribution of €163.2 million for that KIC for 2026 to 2028.
The definition question is about to be settled in law, at least in part. The EIT’s report says a comprehensive review of the memorandum pilot will be undertaken in 2026 and will define the approach after 2027. The Commission’s call for evidence on revising the EIT Regulation closed on September 23 and points to December 2026 for the new regulation, while the Governing Board’s July 2025 vision proposes a new KIC model for the 2028 to 2034 budget period. The Council’s June position on Horizon Europe leaves the EIT legislation to follow separately. Whether the revised rules say what independence means, and how much continued EIT money a sustainable KIC may receive, will determine whether future grants like these are described as support or as exceptions.
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