On 15 January 2026, dAIEDGE held the official kick-off of the third and final round of our Funding Open Calls, a key event that marks the beginning of a new phase for the selected projects and consolidates the impact of the European Edge AI ecosystem.
The session was led by Alain Pagani, Director of the Augmented Vision Research Department at DFKI and coordinator of dAIEDGE, Mohamed Selim (dAIEDGE Project Manager and researcher at the Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI)), Nuria Pazos (researcher at the University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland) and Weronika Gasior (FundingBox), who presented the 10 winners with the keys to making the most of this opportunity.
One of the highlights of the meeting was the presentation of dAIEDGE-VLab, a distributed infrastructure designed to facilitate remote experimentation with AI-powered Edge devices.
Throughout the day, the full Support Programme was also explained, designed to accompany beneficiaries from initial planning to the final demonstration of their solutions. In the first phase, teams develop their Individual Mentoring Plan, where they define technical objectives, performance indicators, development strategy and ethical aspects. Subsequently, in the Implementation Phase, projects focus on the practical validation of their technologies through functional prototypes and advanced testing.
The programme places a strong emphasis on mentoring and continuous monitoring. Each project is supported by experts who accompany its technical and strategic evolution through regular meetings, milestone assessments and review of deliverables. This system ensures not only that deadlines are met, but also the quality and real impact of the developments.
The projects selected in this third call reflect the diversity and potential of the dAIEDGE ecosystem. They address challenges such as efficient federated learning, training on devices with limited resources, low-power voice processing, computer vision on FPGA platforms, intelligent agents, and privacy-focused health monitoring solutions. These initiatives respond to real challenges in areas such as industry, mobility, health, and intelligent systems.
During the kick-off, the importance of integrating ethics and governance of artificial intelligence from the early stages of development was also highlighted. All beneficiaries participate in self-assessment and expert review processes that ensure responsible data management, algorithmic transparency, privacy protection and regulatory compliance.
After the opening day, the teams officially began their journey within the programme, signing sub-grant agreements, organising the first meetings with mentors and starting to develop their work plans. This marks the start of an intensive collaboration process aimed at achieving tangible results.
If you would like to relive the kick-off, you can watch the full recording on our YouTube channel, or if you prefer, click here.