Funding Opportunities

The Capital Region offers attractive funding opportunities for all phases of corporate development - from start-up to growth financing in a wide variety of funding programs and calls. Financial incentives range from public loans, guarantees and equity capital to direct grants for investment and innovation projects.

Here you will find a small overview of the most common funding programmes:

Berlin
All programs for Berlin are listed in the Business Support Guide.

Innovation Assistant

• Focus on personnel costs.
• Target on improving the knowledge base of companies
• with benefits of grants of up to 50% of personnel costs (2 university graduates, within 2 years after graduation), max. 20,000 € for one year.

Transfer BONUS

• Focus on R&D projects/ cooperation projects.
• Target on knowledge and technology transfer
• with benefits of grants of up to 100% for a research contract - max. 7.500 € (entry type) grants of up to 70% for a research contract - max. 15,000 € (standard variant) or 45,000 € (standard digitisation).

Start-upBONUS

• Focus on innovative start-ups with a company age of max. 12 months.
• Target on increasing the number of start-ups
• with 50% funding of the start-up costs up to a maximum of EUR 50,000, financing of almost all costs of the start-up phase.

Coaching Bonus

• Focus on coaching projects.
• Target on Enabling enterprises and founders to master entrepreneurial challenges
• with benefits of grants up to 80% of the coach´s daily rate (max. daily rate of 1,000 €; max. aggregate sum of 20 coaching days).

Pro FIT - early phase financing

• Focus on R&D projects/ cooperation projects.
• Target on knowledge and technology transfer
• with benefits of total financing (loan and/ or grants) up to 500,000 € (early phase 1 and 2); early phase 1: grants/ loan of up to 50% of expenses; max. 200,000 €.

Pro FIT project financing

• Focus on R&D projects/ cooperation projects.
• Target on promotion of research, innovation and technologies
• with benefits of grants up to 400,000 €, interest reduced loans up to 1 million €.
• in Brandenburg: Grant per project is limited to max. 3 million € grant (and 3 million € loan)

Brandenburg
All programs for Brandenburg are listed in the Economic Support Guide.

Brandenburgischer Innovationsgutschein (BIG)

• Focus on R&D projects/ cooperation projects.
• Target on knowledge and technology transfer
• with benefits of grants of up to 100% for a research contract - max. 5.000 € (little BIG transfer) grants of up to 50% for a research contract - max. 15,000 € (big BIG transfer) or 100,000 € (BIG R&D), max. 50,000 € each for the Consulting and Training module and max. 500,000 € for the Implementation module (digitisation project).

Brandenburger Innovationsfachkräfte

• Promotion of scholarships for university studies with final thesis (basis innovative KMU task), part-time employment of working students in the KMU, new employment of university graduates and/or advancement training as innovation assistants
• Project-related grant

Gründung Innovativ

• Eligible to apply are innovative founders, freelancers and SMEs in the first 3 years after founding or taking over with registered office or place of business in the state of Brandenburg.
• Subsidy from 25,000 € to max. 100,000 €.

Bund
A first impression can be received at the webpage of the funding advisory service (in German).

WIPANO

• Focus on examination, advice and patent exploitation activities.
• Target on patenting & exploitation promotion
• with benefits of grants of up to 50% and up to 16,575 € (applicant must have not applied to a patent in the last 5 years)

ZIM

• Focus on R&D projects/ cooperation projects.
• Target on boosting the innovative strength and competitiveness of enterprises
• with benefits of costs eligible for funding of up to 380,000 €; support rates of between 25% and 55%.

KMU-Innovativ

• Focus on R&D projects.
• Target on solving problems in highly relevant and sophisticated way to strengthen the innovative and competitiveness
• with benefits of 50% of own costs with a project for 3 years. Application period is always the 15th of April and October.

GRW

• Focus on Investment in fixed assets, labour costs.
• Target on Investment projects to create and secure permanent jobs
• with benefits (from the states) of subsidies for investments in fixed or intangible assets or labour cost up to 30%.

There are also EU-level funding programmes for innovation and cooperation such as Horizon 2020 and Photonics21.

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