For most startups, validating an innovative solution in a real business environment marks the beginning of a new set of challenges. How do you transform a successful pilot into long-term commercial opportunities? How do you approach investors? How do you build strategic partnerships? And how do you prepare your company to scale? These are exactly the questions the Open Horizons Follow-On Programme was designed to address.

The next stage of the Open Horizons journey has officially begun. After receiving 282 applications through Open Call #2 and completing the Inception Phase, 7 women-led deep-tech startups have now been selected to enter the Pilot Phase of the programme.

Open Horizons Open Call #3 received 389 submitted applications from 38 countries. This is the strongest response across all three open calls of the programme. But beyond the headline numbers, what the submissions reveal is more interesting than any single figure: a growing, geographically diverse community of women-led startups building serious technology and ready to bring it into real industrial environments.

The Open Horizons journey continues with a new group of women-led deep-tech startups ready to transform bold ideas into real market pilots has joined Open Horizons. Following the evaluation of Open Call #2 applications, 12 startups from across Europe have now entered the Inception Phase of the programme. In this key stage they will prepare the selected teams for collaboration with corporates and future pilot implementation.