EU's €5bn Scaleup Fund can back UK and US companies
Sifted reports that the European Union's new €5bn Scaleup Europe Fund is not closed to startups incorporated outside the bloc. The eligibility terms that decide who qualifies have not been published in detail.
The European Union's €5bn Scaleup Europe Fund can put money into companies incorporated in the United Kingdom, and in some cases in the United States, according to a report by Sifted.
That is the opposite of what the fund's name suggests. A pot of European public money carrying a European label would normally be read by founders as a European-incorporation requirement.
Sifted describes the finding as an exclusive. The conditions a non-EU company would have to meet to draw on the money have not been set out publicly in any detail.
For a founder, the practical question is narrow and unanswered: what a UK or US holding company would need to show — operations, staff, subsidiaries, or redomiciling — to be treated as eligible.
Until the fund publishes its eligibility terms, the only safe assumption is that the door is not bolted shut. Founders who had written the fund off on incorporation grounds alone may want to check that assumption before their next raise.
The size of the fund is the one hard number in play. €5bn is large enough that the answer matters to any European-operating company at scaleup stage, wherever its paperwork sits.