The funding gap grows when revenues shrink, so the Commission's template is engineered against understated revenues. It expects four separate streams, and it audits all of them.
The aid amount equals the project's financing shortfall, which means every euro of revenue you omit inflates the gap, and the Commission knows it. The current template therefore breaks revenues into four mandatory categories: main revenues from the project's own products and services (licences, usage-based fees, premium services, product sales); cost savings and synergies inside the company (scaling at lower marginal cost, labour savings, capital reuse, knowledge that accelerates future projects); adjacent and related products, such as paid services built around an open-source core; and upgraded and improved versions of the project's own products, from add-ons to premium extensions.
Four streams, and the rules that police them.
The rules behind the streams
– Streams three and four can only reduce the gap. Their revenues and costs enter the calculation only if their own NPV is positive. A loss-making side business cannot be used to deepen the funding gap.
– A loss-making project is not fundable. A project projected to remain loss-making throughout the forecast period, or for a significant part of it, raises viability concerns and is in principle not acceptable for an IPCEI. The instrument funds projects that become viable with help, not projects that never do.
– Mass production is mandatory. The model must show market introduction. Mass-production revenues and costs belong in the business plan even though its costs are never eligible. An R&D-only project with no revenues does not qualify.
– Volume times price. Every revenue line is expected as sales volume multiplied by unit price, each justified against market data, expected price trends and margin benchmarks. Flat revenue assumptions invite questions.
One nuance in the other direction: a deliberately conservative single-stream model is permitted if justified. Leave the unused revenue tabs blank, never delete them, and do not invent streams just to look complete. What the Commission polices is inflation of the gap, in either direction of dishonesty.
The takeaway.
Model your revenues the way a sceptical buyer would: all four streams, volume times price, benchmarked margins. If you find revenue the template would have found later, your funding gap is smaller but your credibility, and your approval odds, are larger.
Sources
– IPCEI Communication, OJ C 528, 30.12.2021 (EUR-Lex)
– European Commission – IPCEI overview (DG Competition)
– European Commission, Funding gap template for IPCEI projects (RDI & FID), version 3.2 adjusted for IPCEI AI, April 2026 (distributed to applicants via national authorities)
– DG COMP Unit H23, IPCEI AI workshop for direct participants and Member States: project portfolio, funding gap and spillovers, 12 June 2026 (workshop materials)