EIC and EIT name winners of European Prize for Women Innovators

The European Innovation Council and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology have announced this year’s winners of the European Prize for Women Innovators, naming founders from Oxford Heartbeat, ATMOS Space Cargo and Minespider as category winners. The awards put EU-backed attention on companies working in AI-assisted clinical planning, return-from-orbit hardware and supply chain traceability, though the organizers did not disclose prize amounts, company revenues or valuations.

The prize is open to women founders and co-founders from EU Member States and countries associated with Horizon Europe. Since 2023, the EIC and EIT have presented it jointly, selecting nine winners across three categories.

Three category winners

Katerina Spranger, founder and CEO of Oxford Heartbeat, won first place in the EIC Women Innovators category. According to the organizers, Oxford Heartbeat has developed AI technology intended to help clinicians plan brain aneurysm treatment with greater precision and safety.

The announcement did not include clinical adoption data, regulatory details or customer numbers for Oxford Heartbeat. For healthtech operators and investors, those omissions matter: AI in clinical planning is a crowded and highly regulated category, and evidence, workflow integration and reimbursement usually determine whether a product can scale beyond pilots.

Marta Oliveira, co-founder and COO of ATMOS Space Cargo, won the EIC Rising Innovators award, which is reserved for entrepreneurs under 35. The company is developing reusable capsules designed to bring materials back from orbit. The stated use cases include in-space manufacturing and scientific research.

ATMOS sits in a strategically sensitive part of the European space sector: sovereign return capability. The award follows broader interest in infrastructure that lets Europe conduct more work in orbit without relying entirely on non-European systems. The organizers did not provide technical specifications, launch timelines or customer commitments for the company in the award announcement.

Ella Frances Cullen, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Germany-based Minespider, won the EIT Women Leadership Award. Minespider uses blockchain and AI to build digital product and battery passports, according to the organizers, with a focus on supply chain traceability, transparency and compliance.

Battery passports are becoming a practical compliance issue for companies that sell into Europe’s industrial and mobility markets. Minespider’s positioning aligns with that regulatory pull, although the award announcement did not specify customer volume, deployment scale or how its AI systems are used in production.

What the prize signals

The European Prize for Women Innovators is not a financing round, and the announcement did not include capital raised by the winners. Its value is visibility: the EIC and EIT use the prize to promote women-led technology companies from the Horizon Europe network and to point attention toward sectors where European policy and industrial strategy overlap.

The three named winners reflect that mix. Healthcare AI, space logistics and battery supply chain data are all areas where Europe is trying to build defensible technology companies while meeting regulatory and public-sector priorities. The awards do not establish market leadership, but they do show which kinds of companies EU innovation bodies want to elevate.

This story draws on original reporting from Tech.eu.