European Spinouts Report 2025: the CNRS is ranked top among European research centres driving startup creation!
The 'European Spinouts Report 2025' released on Thursday November 20th ranks the CNRS first among research centres for spinout creation in the deep tech and life science sectors. This remarkable achievement confirms the CNRS's position as Europe’s leading institution for the transfer of innovations from laboratories to the economic sphere.
Capitalizing on scientific research by transforming promising technologies into marketable innovations, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) addresses this challenge daily through its prematuration and RISE programmes and its startup creation support initiative operated by its 'CNRS Innovation' branch. The 2025 ranking of European spinouts places the CNRS at the top of European research centres fostering the emergence of deep tech and life science companies. This clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach driven by the CNRS and its subsidiaries - CNRS Innovation and its 13 technology transfer acceleration companies (SATTs) - for several years now.
This report was published by Atlantic, MITO Technology, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Oxford Science Enterprises, Northern Gritstone, and Dealroom and ranks research centres based on several criteria including:
- The number of spinouts created since 2022,
- The number of spinouts that raised more than $10 million,
- The number of 'unicorns' that derived from these spinouts.
With this position at the top of this ranking, the CNRS has confirmed its status as Europe’s leading institution for the economic valorisation of research. In this context, the services provided by CNRS Innovation are more essential than ever to promote innovations from the CNRS's laboratories and partners by ensuring the protection of inventions and supporting the creation of startups and market launches of cutting-edge technologies.
This news echoes the latest report from the European Patent Office which ranks the CNRS first among European public research organisations for European patent applications filed between 2001 and 2020.
Read the full 'European Spinouts 2025' report.
RISE: supporting the creation of spin-offs from CNRS laboratories.
CNRS Innovation runs the RISE programme dedicated to supporting start-up creation from CNRS laboratories for researchers ready to take the step towards entrepreneurship. The programme helps participants define their business model, recruit key co-founders and prepare for fundraising. Each year, around 30 new startup projects emerge from this programme, spanning fields like quantum computing, health, materials science and artificial intelligence. RISE transforms scientific ambition into entrepreneurial action, ensuring that each project finds the right market fit and founding team.