Cascade funding, also known as Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP), is a mechanism where on behalf of the European Commission funding is given to assist organisations in the uptake or development of innovation, often limited to a quite narrow niche. It is a entry-level funding scheme which is aims at and is beneficial for startups, scale-ups, SMEs and/or mid-caps.

The full overview of the 23 open calls (at the moment of writing) can be found on on the Funding & Tenders Portal, in this article we'll focus on the call topics that are related to Digital topics.

Research Data Alliance (RDA) / European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)

• Open Call for RDA cross-disciplinary adoption in support of EOSC
• Open Call for cross disciplinary science adoption grants

European Health Data & Evidence Network (EHDEN)

EHDEN’s mission is to reduce the time needed to provide answers in real world, health research. It will achieve this by developing the required infrastructure in a federated network at scale across Europe, collaboration on research methodologies, and education in an open science collaboration.

• 6th Open Call for Data Partners

Smart4ALL

Knowledge Transfer Experiments (KTE) are a short-term (3 months) internship projects between two different entities from two different Countries: one Academic/Industrial partner who act as Sending Organization and one Academic/Industrial partner who act as Host Organization.

Knowledge Transfer Experiments (KTE) comprise a novel type of experiments allowing smaller projects, or less mature ideas to be presented, tested and thus potentially find the fertile ground to grow and reveal its product potentials.

• Final Open Call for Knowledge Tranfer Experiments

DIH-World

DIH-World aims to accelerate the uptake of advanced digital technologies by European manufacturing SMEs in all sectors by supporting them in building sustainable competitive advantages and reaching global markets. To achieve this objective, the DIH-World project consortium is launching its second open calls to select and support up to 20 SME-driven experiments.

• 2nd Open Call for innovative experiments

Mind4MACHINES

MIND4MACHINES targets digitalisation of the manufacturing industry. It will fund the development, testing, validation, and market uptake of Industry 4.0 solutions of technology provider SMEs and startups. 

• 1st Open Call

Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE)

Be awarded up to €500,000-worth of cloud infrastructure, platform and software services and drive improved agility and outcomes for your research project!

• Call details

Ontochain

Ontochain will provide funding to internet innovators for developing Blockchain-based knowledge management solutions that address the challenge of secure and transparent knowledge management as well as service interoperability on the Internet.

• 3rd open call - application and experimentation

InterConnect 

InterConnect is looking for Bottom-up projects that will develop and test novel Interoperable applications or services for smart homes and grids, with a clear societal and economic value, on top of the InterConnect’s Interoperability Framework.

• Prototypes Open Call

AI Regio

AI REGIO will build a one-stop-shop platform that enables access to resources for AI-based solutions in efficient and sustainable manufacturing, with particular emphasis on resources that can lower the AI adoption barriers for SMEs.

• 2nd open call

PULSATE

PULSATE is the new PAN-European Network designed to boost the adoption of Laser-based Advanced and Additive Manufacturing (LBAAM) technology that will empower the European Manufacturing industry digitalization.

• 2nd Open Call for Technology Transfer Experiments

NGI Assure

Assure support projects that design and engineer reusable building blocks for the Next Generation Internet as part of a complete, strong chain of assurances for all stakeholders regarding the source and integrity of identities, identifiers, data, cyberphysical systems, service components and processes. 

• 10th Open Call

NGI Zero Entrust

Among others this project is looking to deliver architectures, protocols and services to ensure that end-users can exert their rights (e.g. under the GDPR) and benefit from decentralised technological solutions that ensure that they are fully in control of their personal data on the Internet.

• 1st call

KITT4SME

Platform-enabled KITs of arTificial intelligence FOR an easy uptake by SMEs. Open call for demonstrating an AI solution in a relevant manufacturing environment.

• Type B open call

AIPLAN

Automated Planning and Scheduling is a central research area in AI, concerned with reasoning on a predictive model of a system to identify a course of actions that achieves a desired goa

• Open Call #3 for Use-cases

RESETTING

Relaunching European smart and SustainablE Tourism models Through digitalization and INnovative technoloGies

• Open Call for Tourism SMEs

I4TRUST

Data Spaces for effective and trusted data sharing. A collaborative initiative boosting the development of innovative services around new data value chains in multiple sectors.

• 2nd Open Call

Change2Twin

Create and Harvest Offerings to support Manufacturing SMEs to become Digital Twin Champions

• 2nd Assessment Voucher Open Call

IoT-NGIN

Validate the IoT-NGIN components/technology by EU based SMEs active in IoT applications’ development.

• Open Call #2