Athens, Greece

COP-PILOT Horizon Announces the 8 Winners of Its First Open Call

13 October 2026

Eight innovative projects have been selected in the first Open Call of the COP-PILOT Horizon Europe project, securing up to €200,000 each in equity-free funding. The winning entities will integrate, test, and scale their solutions within COP-PILOT’s Collaborative Open Platform to drive secure, interoperable, and AI-driven orchestration across critical European sectors.

A Surge of Innovation Across Europe

A Surge of Innovation Across Europe The first edition of the COP-PILOT Open Call attracted a record total of 369 proposals, demonstrating strong engagement from Europe's innovation ecosystem. Applications were submitted by a diverse community of single SMEs and startups, as well as collaborative consortia bringing together SMEs, research organisations, and industrial technology providers. This broad participation reflects Europe's strong innovation landscape and the growing interest in developing interoperable AI, Cloud, Edge, and IoT solutions.

Rigorous Selection Process

To guarantee seamless technical integration and alignment with COP-PILOT’s platform architecture, all submitted proposals underwent a stringent multi-stage evaluation process. After eligibility and feasibility screenings, 146 proposals from 27 countries advanced to independent external experts for in-depth review. Of these, 84 came from single applicants and 62 from collaborative consortia, showing that COP-PILOT attracted both agile innovators and multi-partner collaborations. These 146 evaluated proposals addressed complex real-world challenges across five core operational clusters:

Cluster 1 (Mining): 8 proposals
Cluster 2 (Smart Cities): 21 proposals
Cluster 3A (Agriculture): 33 proposals
Cluster 3E (Energy): 44 proposals
Cluster 4 (Vineyards): 40 proposals

From this highly competitive pool, 8 winning projects were selected to receive up to €200,000 in equity-free funding each. Beyond direct financial support, the beneficiaries now enter an intensive eight-month acceleration program featuring:

Tailored technical mentoring and direct COP-PILOT platform training
Hands-on integration and validation within major European pilot environments
Direct access to COP-PILOT’s testbed infrastructures, real industrial data, and expert network
Validate and showcase innovative digital solutions in real industrial environments.

The 8 winners are:

Acronym	Full Title of the Proposal	Cluster	Organisation Name	Country
QUANTUM-RESILIENT 5G	Quantum-Resilient Private 5G for Business Integration in Underground Mining	CL1	i46 s.r.o	Czech Republic
TURIA	Technology for Unified Radar Intelligence and Agent-based flood monitoring	CL2	SENSORBITE P.S.A.	Poland
BRISA	BRISA - A Foundational Time-Series Model as Forecasting-as-a-Service for Smart Sustainable Urban Ecosystems	CL2	BRISA IMPACT	Spain
ISOBUS-TRACE	Edge-AI Activity Recognition and EBSI-Compatible Blockchain Traceability for Onboard Tractor ISOBUS Logging	CL3A	Random Red	Croatia
HERALD	Health-based Edge Resource and Load Dispatching	CL3E	Simtera Bilişim İletişim Tek. Ltd. Şti	Turkey
ALADIN-X	ALADIN-X: Edge-Intelligent Power Quality Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance Platform for RES-Rich Distribution Grids	CL3E	PowerEmp, SRL	Italy
OASYS	Orchestrated AI Service for Yield-oriented Smart irrigation	CL4	Elliot Cloud SL	Spain
OENOSENSE	Edge Computer-Vision Intelligence for Real-Time Vineyard Health, Ripeness Estimation and Winery Process Control on the COP-PILOT Continuum	CL4	MULTICEPTION	Greece

Turning Multi-Domain Orchestration into Reality

“We are thrilled with the overwhelming interest and high calibre of proposals received in our first Open Call. Seeing so many talented European startups, SMEs, and research actors step forward is a clear indication that our vision for collaborative, multi-domain orchestration is deeply needed across industries. The selected winners bring exceptional technical ingenuity to our Clusters, and we look forward to working side-by-side with them to scale their technologies within a future-ready, standards-aligned digital ecosystem,” stated Ioanna Drigkopoulou, COP-PILOT Horizon Project Coordinator.

Looking Ahead

COP-PILOT Horizon will launch its second Open Call during the last quarter of 2026, offering another opportunity for European innovators to deploy their solutions within the project's expanding ecosystem. Full details and application timelines will be announced on the project website.

About COP-PILOT Horizon

COP-PILOT Horizon is an Innovation Action co-funded under the Horizon Europe program by the European Union and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). The project is developing a Collaborative Open Platform (COP) that enables secure, interoperable, and AI-driven orchestration across Cloud-Edge-IoT infrastructures. By piloting real-world use cases across Mining, Smart Cities, Agriculture, Energy, and Vineyards, COP-PILOT accelerates the adoption of advanced digital technologies and supports cross-sector collaboration across Europe. For more information about COP-PILOT and its achievements, follow the LinkedIn and Mastodon accounts and subscribe to the newsletter.