The Valencia Institute for Business Competitiveness (Ivace), part of the Ministry of Innovation, Industry, Tourism and Trade, allocated a total of 18.8 million euros to the Valencian Community’s technology institutes. This funding supports 90 collaborative I+DI projects with around 300 Valencian companies, forging stronger links between research teams and local industry.
Carried out between January 2023 and June 2024, these initiatives are co-financed by the Feder-CV 2021-2027 Program and backed by Ivace. They are designed to generate high value-added knowledge and technology that can be readily transferred to businesses across the Valencian Community, accelerating practical applications and early technology adoption.
Participant companies play a central role in guiding the research agenda so that the results from the region’s 11 technology centers address real, current needs and future challenges. This alignment helps ensure research outputs translate into tangible improvements in competitiveness for local firms.
The 90 Ivace-supported projects align with the Smart Specialization Strategy for the Valencian Community (S3-CV). This strategy steers investment toward priority areas with strong transformation potential and seeks to connect regional capacities with the actors who can drive implementation and scale across industry sectors.
Approximately 40 percent of the funded projects focus on eco-innovation, circular economy practices, and low-carbon solutions. The remainder emphasizes digital technologies, disruptive innovations, and data systems with significant potential for the Valencian economy and, by extension, comparable regional economies in North America and beyond who are exploring similar technology-enabled transformations.
Funding for the technology centers comes from two main channels. One channel, co-financed with European funds, supports highly mature research in collaboration with companies with a clear path to short-term industrial transfer and commercialization. The other channel comes from Generalitat Valenciana private funds, supporting medium- and long-term research efforts to build deeper capabilities and sustain innovation ecosystems.