AI for good

Mention Artificial Intelligence (AI) in conversation, and you’re likely to hear two things: excitement about its potential and anxiety about its consequences.

Whether you’re an English Year Six teacher worried about plagiarism, a car manufacturing worker fearing for the future of work, or an everyday citizen worried about constant surveillance or the erosion of human relationships — the fear of AI is very real.

But while caution is necessary with such powerful tools, it’s equally important to acknowledge their vast potential. One of the greatest advantages of working at the EIF is seeing first-hand how European businesses are dedicated to transforming their local communities — and, in many cases, making a global impact as a result.

From changing traditional fishing practices to tackling Alzheimer’s, this article explores how EIF-backed SMEs are turning the potential of AI into tangible solutions.

AI and healthcare

According to the WEF, 4.5 billion people lack access to essential healthcare services. AI can help bridge this gap, though healthcare remains ‘below average’ in AI adoption compared to other industries.

Healthcare is deeply personal, yet the way we develop yet the way we develop medicines remains largely one-size-fits-all.

“There is more personalisation in clothes than in how you buy medicine,” says Luis Valente, CEO of iLoF, a digital health company specialising in personalised drug discovery, currently mostly focused on Alzheimer’s. “If a T-shirt is too small, the shop assistant simply brings a new one. But in clinical trials, they’ll say the T-shirt is broken.”

Porto-based iLoF uses an AI-powered platform to analyse light-based signals from biological samples. These signals, in turn, create a unique profile that reveals key characteristics, ultimately allowing iLoF to group patients in clinical trials by disease cause, stage, or severity, reducing the inefficiencies that hinder drug development. Alzheimer’s is the largest and fastest-growing disease without a disease-modifying treatment and clinical trials are notoriously difficult, as one drug doesn’t fit all. In practical terms, this is groundbreaking.

While AI can be applied to treating widespread diseases, French deeptech company Kiro uses it to analyse lab results, offering clearer insights for better medical decisions.

“Think of finance, trade, or advertising — we can look at extremely detailed information and analyse it at a super-micro level. That’s what we want to do in medicine,” says Alexandre Guenoun, CEO of Kiro.

Lab results can be complex, requiring doctors to track multiple data points over time. Kiro’s AI simplifies this process, helping professionals analyse data more efficiently and making results easier for patients to understand.

AI and sustainability

Innovation is at the heart of building a more sustainable society, and AI has become a powerful tool for environmental and climate action. At the EIF, we see SMEs driving impact in ways that are as diverse as they are innovative.

OroraTech, a data intelligence start-up from Munich, combines satellite temperature data with AI to detect wildfires early and minimise their environmental impact.

“Eighteen percent of global CO2 emissions come from wildfires,” explains Thomas Gruebler, co-founder and CEO of OroraTech. “The best way to fight climate change is through precise temperature data because it’s all connected to temperature. If we use this data efficiently, we can do a lot to protect the planet,” says Thomas.

OroraTech’s platform can see through smoke from space, accurately monitor heat events on the ground, and then process the data using AI. Users receive instant notifications, allowing faster responses, long-term risk mapping, and a cheaper alternative to traditional firefighting methods like planes and lookout towers.

Moving from space to the ocean, AI also plays a part in Norwegian company Ava Ocean’s mission to reinvent seabed harvesting. Ava Ocean wants to create an alternative to ‘scallop dredging technology’, a blanket ‘solution’ that destroys the seabed and everything in its path to get scallops.

“Our harvesting units operate just above the seabed. A pumping solution creates a water flow, lifting the scallops into the basket with little to no damage to the seabed. A sorting mechanism can also return non-scallops to the seabed and there’s camera technology so we can see where it’s best to harvest. We call it precision harvesting,” says Øystein Tvedt, CEO of Ava Ocean.

AI helps Ava Ocean to live monitor the harvesting and collect data from the seabed. AI is also helping them locate the scallop target areas, giving them a competitive advantage in a traditional industry. “We’re seeing that the industry is very interested in this better, modern, sustainable solution to harvesting,” says Øystein. ” We need to go forward and find solutions that work for fishermen, and we need to do it in a collaborative, thorough, step by step manner.”

AI and the way we work

Forget the ChatGPT-written LinkedIn posts you keep seeing from colleagues — AI is transforming workplaces in far more impactful ways. It automates time-consuming, repetitive tasks, allowing organisations and individuals to focus on higher-value, creative, and strategic work while also unlocking new efficiencies.

Paris-based Shift Technology is a concrete example of this. They help insurance companies to detect fraud by integrating AI-enabled, machine-learning models into these companies’ processes. In an industry previously devoid of automation, fraud is common and often goes undetected. Shift Technology’s tool flags potential fraudulent claims by analysing multiple data sources and ultimately gives the insurer the best recommendations for suspicious claims.

“Not only can we help save endless hours spent scrutinising documents but also ensure that claims professionals can dedicate their time to satisfying customers’ real needs and guide them through often-complicated processes,” says Jeremy Jawish, CEO and co-founder of Shift Technology.

AI can also enhance one of the most fundamental expressions of human interaction: language. Unbabel is a Lisbon and San Francisco-based company active in the B2B space that enables modern enterprises to serve customers in their native languages with AI-powered, human translation support.

“Diversity of languages can become an issue when a company scales to other markets. From marketing to product descriptions, sales to customer service… This is what we have set out to solve,” says Vasco Pedro, CEO and co-founder of Unbabel.

But how does it work in practice? Well, Unbabel’s platform, powered by its constantly re-trained AI, allows a customer in China to write an email in Chinese to their English-speaking customer service. The service team reads the email and replies in English, with the response then translated back into Chinese for the customer.

AI for good

From improving healthcare to advancing environmental protection and bridging communities through translation, AI has the potential to reshape society and transform the way we work. The SMEs highlighted above are just a few examples of European entrepreneurs embracing the AI boom with optimism.

The EIF is proud to support these SMEs as they demonstrate AI’s vast potential when applied thoughtfully, reshaping perceptions of AI one innovation at a time.