What this call funds
Expected Outcome
The Apply AI Strategy[1] also seeks to bolster EU capabilities and achieve excellence in AI to support the development of European frontier models. As part of the Frontier AI Initiative, which brings together Europe’s leading actors in the field, this topic will support the development of sovereign frontier AI ensuring safety by design. This topic directly contributes to the Apply AI Strategy. Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
- Strengthened European capabilities in the development of frontier AI models.
- Improved computational efficiency of frontier AI models, resulting in reduced computational costs.
- Enhanced safety of advanced AI systems based on frontier AI models through the development and implementation of safe-by-design principles and/or AI agents acting as safety evaluators.
Scope
To advance developments of frontier AI models towards highest-level performance, while ensuring energy efficiency, addressing computational constraints, and strengthening safety. The approach of this topic is twofold. First, it aims to advance the AI field through the development and training of a frontier AI model. The AI model should demonstrate state-of-the-art performance, have multimodal capabilities, and be optimized for agentic AI capabilities such as tool use, reasoning, and autonomous problem-solving. Second, this topic supports research on comprehensive methods to reduce the computational demands of frontier AI models and to ensure their safety, including technical methodologies such as automated testing and interpretability.
The primary drivers behind computational efficient AI systems are the urgent challenges posed by the growing energy footprint of AI and current computational limitations. Modern AI models, especially frontier AI models, require substantial computational resources, with a significant impact in the environment. Additionally, they create barriers to entry to those interested in advancing the AI field. Key research areas include compression and distillation techniques aimed at reducing the complexity of large AI models. Innovations in AI architectures are also relevant, with a focus on innovative models that significantly lower computational demands for training and inference. Further, algorithmic approaches aimed at minimizing computational load during pre-training, post-training, and inference can also be considered.
Ensuring the safety of AI systems is essential, especially as AI models become increasingly sophisticated and pervasive. Potential research areas to be considered include addressing misalignment, particularly the unintentional misalignment of large AI models. Work in this area could explore methods to detect and mitigate sophisticated misbehaviour, such as alignment faking, reward hacking of human oversight, and encoded reasoning in chain-of-thought (CoT). Additionally, research could focus on enhancing robustness against adversarial attacks, jailbreaks, and backdoors. Further potential areas for innovation include advancing AI models transparency and interpretability. Safety research could also consider risks that may arise when embedding frontier models within agentic AI frameworks, significantly contributing to the trust and safe adoption of powerful AI solutions.
This topic contributes to the EU Frontier AI initiative. The project should establish strong links with the Resource for AI Science in Europe (RAISE), ensuring that its priorities inform the research topics addressed. Activities are expected to involve the European AI research community and attract and retain top AI talent working on frontier models and related areas.
All proposals are expected to incorporate mechanisms for assessing and demonstrating progress, including qualitative and quantitative KPIs, benchmarking, and progress monitoring. When possible, proposals should build on and reuse public results from relevant previous funded actions. Communicable results should be shared with the European R&D community through the AI-on-demand platform.
The project selected in this topic should link to the resources offered by the AI Factories and the Data Labs. Where relevant, it could also establish links with European companies developing frontier AI models.
All proposals are expected to allocate tasks for cohesion activities with the European Partnership on AI, data, and robotics (ADRA) and the CSA HORIZON-CL4-2025-03-HUMAN-18: GenAI4EU central Hub.
Technology Readiness Level - Technology readiness level expected from completed projects
Activities are expected to start at TRL 2 and achieve TRL 4 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.
[1] COM(2025)723 Apply AI Strategy
Eligibility & conditions+
General conditions
1. Admissibility Conditions: Proposal page limit and layout
described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes.
Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.
2. Eligible Countries
described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.
3. Other Eligible Conditions
In order to achieve the expected outcomes, and safeguard the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, and security, it is important to avoid a situation of technological dependency on a non-EU source, in a global context that requires the EU to take action to build on its strengths, and to carefully assess and address any strategic weaknesses, vulnerabilities and high-risk dependencies which put at risk the attainment of its ambitions. For this reason, participation is limited to legal entities established in Member States, Iceland and Norway and the following additional associated countries: Canada, Israel, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. In addition, entities established in third countries which may become associated to Horizon Europe during 2026 and 2027 may be eligible to participate in this topic if the third country is identified for this topic as an eligible country in the List of Participating Countries in Horizon Europe at the time of submission of the application[[See the List of Participating Countries in Horizon Europe available at https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/common/guidance/list-3rd-country-participation_horizon-euratom_en.pdf.]]. In any case, the association agreement to the Programme must apply by the time of the signature of the grant agreement.
For the duly justified and exceptional reasons listed in the paragraph above, in order to guarantee the protection of the strategic interests of the Union and its Member States, entities established in an eligible country listed above, but which are directly or indirectly controlled by a non-eligible country or by a non-eligible country entity, may not participate in the action unless it can be demonstrated, by means of guarantees positively assessed by their eligible country of establishment, that their participation to the action would not negatively impact the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, or security . Entities established in an eligible country, but which are directly or indirectly controlled by China or by a legal entity established in China cannot submit guarantees.
[[ The guarantees shall in particular substantiate that, for the purpose of the action, measures are in place to ensure that: a) control over the applicant legal entity is not exercised in a manner that retrains or restricts its ability to carry out the action and to deliver results, that imposes restrictions concerning its infrastructure, facilities, assets, resources, intellectual property or know-how needed for the purpose of the action, or that undermines its capabilities and standards necessary to carry out the action; b) access by a non-eligible country or by a non-eligible country entity to sensitive information relating to the action is prevented; and the employees or other persons involved in the action have a national security clearance issued by an eligible country, where appropriate; c) ownership of the intellectual property arising from, and the results of, the action remain within the recipient during and after completion of the action, are not subject to control or restrictions by non-eligible countries or non-eligible country entity, and are not exported outside the eligible countries, nor is access to them from outside the eligible countries granted, without the approval of the eligible country in which the legal entity is established.]]
Described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion
described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes.
5a. Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds
are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes.
5b. Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processes
are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual.
5c. Evaluation and award: Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement
described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes.
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants
described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes.
Specific conditions
described in the [specific topic of the Work Programme]
Application and evaluation forms and model grant agreement (MGA):
Application form templates — the application form specific to this call is available in the Submission System
Standard application form (HE RIA, IA)
Evaluation form templates — will be used with the necessary adaptations
Standard evaluation form (HE RIA, IA)
Guidance
HE Programme Guide
Model Grant Agreements (MGA)
HE MGA 
Call-specific instructions 
Ownership Control Declaration Annex
Additional documents:
HE Main Work Programme 2026-2027 – 1. General Introduction
HE Main Work Programme 2026-2027 – 7. Digital, Industry and Space
HE Main Work Programme 2026-2027 – 15. General Annexes
HE Programme Guide
HE Framework Programme 2021/695
HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764
EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509
Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment
EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement
Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual
Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions 
Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement
Guidance on participation in EU calls with ownership and control restrictions
Source: EU Funding & Tenders Portal · synced 2026-10-13