The six startups to form the first cohort of the Project Europe accelerator have been named.

Project Europe was launched in March and is aimed at entrepreneurs and offers €200,000 in exchange for 6.66 per cent equity.

In the first 24 hours after its launch, Project Europe had 600,000 site views and 1,000+ applications.

Podcaster-turned-investor Harry Stebbings is one of the people behind the fund, which has been backed by 150+ of the best European founders to nurture the cream of Europe’s tech talent.

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The six companies, which come from across Europe, assembled in London earlier his month for three days of troubleshooting and collaboration.

Stebbings, founder of 20V, said: “I believe Project Europe will be the most meaningful work of my life.

“Europe is at the precipice of falling into irrelevance. In a world of Chinese and US dominance, we must stand up and be counted.

“In every corner of every European country, we have the hungriest, grittiest, and talented entrepreneurs.

“It is time to unleash them. To empower them. To make them think bigger, with more resources, more talent and more opportunity.

“This is the work I will be proud to tell my grandchildren about.”

A core pillar of Project Europe is to encourage the next generation to take greater risks and make entrepreneurship.

Kitty Mayo, CEO, Project Europe, said: “Every two months, we bring all our teams together in person. Days are focused. Lunchtimes are for drop ins from special guests. Night times are for events and deep conversations with the Project Europe network.

“It’s intense and it’s the core of how we work; Project Europe is a network that spans the globe. Coworks create the density of network that many European builders crave, where global maxima are revealed.”

Serial entrepreneur Debbie Wosskow OBE, who is co-chair of the UK’s Invest in Women Workforce, has previously criticised the lack of female representation.

The six European startups to form the first cohort are:

  • Cerebionics, Norway: Cerebionics is developing brain-computer interfaces for robotic platforms and was founded by 23-year-old Agnessa Pedersen.
  • Hacktron AI, England: Hacktron AI builds autonomous agents that think and act like elite security researchers. Its aim is to make software harder to exploit. It was founded by Zayne Zhang; Mohan Sri Rama Krishna Pedhapati; and Harsh Jaiswal.
  • Haicker, Switzerland: Haicker uses AI agents to analyse your web applications, find security issues and then validate them. Co-founder Philippe Dourassov and Manaf Mhamdi Alaoui.
  • Philon, Greece: Founded by Alexandros Petkos, Philon is building open-source general-purpose robots capable of performing unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks.
  • Zero Industries, France and Portugal: Zero is a defence tech startup building plug-and-play autonomy modules for drones and unmanned systems. Co-founded by: Joao Goncalo Silva; Alvaro Patricio; and Frederico Baptista.
  • Zellify, Sweden: Zellify helps consumer mobile app developers avoid Apple and Google’s 30 per cent in-app purchase fees by monetising outside the app stores. Co-founders are Marcus Persson  and Nils Nygren Liljenstrand.