Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NGI Search (Next Generation Internet Discovery and Search)
Berichtszeitraum: 2024-03-01 bis 2025-08-31
The digital transformation of society depends on the ability to find, access, and interpret trustworthy information. However, much of today’s search and discovery infrastructure is dominated by global platforms whose opaque business models raise concerns regarding privacy, transparency, and trust. This dependency limits Europe’s capacity to ensure technological autonomy and digital sovereignty. In this context, the NGI Search project was created to rethink how search and discovery technologies can serve the public good and strengthen a human-centric digital ecosystem aligned with European values.
NGI Search’s overarching objective is to empower a new generation of innovators, researchers, and entrepreneurs to design open, trustworthy, and privacy-respecting search solutions. Its mission contributes directly to Europe’s strategic ambition of achieving digital sovereignty by advancing technologies that are transparent, ethical, and aligned with social needs. The project places particular emphasis on openness, inclusiveness, sustainability, and respect for human rights.
A defining feature of NGI Search is its distributed funding model: 80 percent of its budget is dedicated to third-party innovators selected through five competitive open calls, with the remaining resources supporting mentoring, coordination, and communication. This bottom-up approach has resulted in a portfolio of 51 funded projects spanning privacy-aware search engines, misinformation detection, ethical AI, domain-specific services in health and food, and new uses of large language models for search and discovery. All funded projects are open source, with over 75 percent delivering deployable code, reinforcing Europe’s competitiveness in the search and discovery domain.
NGI Search provides beneficiaries with comprehensive mentoring, business model development, and visibility at major open-source events such as FOSDEM and OW2con. It also fosters synergies with sister initiatives, including the Open Web Search project, ensuring coherence within the wider NGI ecosystem. Through its ecosystem activation activities, NGI Search identified over 36,000 potential innovators across Europe, creating a vibrant network of “NGI Searchers” committed to open and trustworthy technologies.
The project integrates the social sciences and humanities as a core element of its design. All funded projects undergo ethics reviews and consider societal impacts such as fairness, transparency, gender balance, and sustainability. This ensures that technical developments are grounded in human values and ethical principles.
The expected impact of NGI Search is visible across multiple dimensions. Technologically, it has advanced privacy, transparency, and user trust. Economically, it has supported innovative SMEs and research teams to reach market readiness, with over 20 percent expected to achieve adoption within two years. Strategically, it strengthens Europe’s leadership in human-centric search and discovery systems. By promoting open, ethical, and sustainable innovation, NGI Search lays the foundation for a future in which citizens, researchers, and businesses can rely on digital services that truly serve the public interest.
NGI Search’s overarching objective is to empower a new generation of innovators, researchers, and entrepreneurs to design open, trustworthy, and privacy-respecting search solutions. Its mission contributes directly to Europe’s strategic ambition of achieving digital sovereignty by advancing technologies that are transparent, ethical, and aligned with social needs. The project places particular emphasis on openness, inclusiveness, sustainability, and respect for human rights.
A defining feature of NGI Search is its distributed funding model: 80 percent of its budget is dedicated to third-party innovators selected through five competitive open calls, with the remaining resources supporting mentoring, coordination, and communication. This bottom-up approach has resulted in a portfolio of 51 funded projects spanning privacy-aware search engines, misinformation detection, ethical AI, domain-specific services in health and food, and new uses of large language models for search and discovery. All funded projects are open source, with over 75 percent delivering deployable code, reinforcing Europe’s competitiveness in the search and discovery domain.
NGI Search provides beneficiaries with comprehensive mentoring, business model development, and visibility at major open-source events such as FOSDEM and OW2con. It also fosters synergies with sister initiatives, including the Open Web Search project, ensuring coherence within the wider NGI ecosystem. Through its ecosystem activation activities, NGI Search identified over 36,000 potential innovators across Europe, creating a vibrant network of “NGI Searchers” committed to open and trustworthy technologies.
The project integrates the social sciences and humanities as a core element of its design. All funded projects undergo ethics reviews and consider societal impacts such as fairness, transparency, gender balance, and sustainability. This ensures that technical developments are grounded in human values and ethical principles.
The expected impact of NGI Search is visible across multiple dimensions. Technologically, it has advanced privacy, transparency, and user trust. Economically, it has supported innovative SMEs and research teams to reach market readiness, with over 20 percent expected to achieve adoption within two years. Strategically, it strengthens Europe’s leadership in human-centric search and discovery systems. By promoting open, ethical, and sustainable innovation, NGI Search lays the foundation for a future in which citizens, researchers, and businesses can rely on digital services that truly serve the public interest.
Over its full duration, NGI Search achieved its technical and scientific objectives and delivered strong results across all work packages. The project established a distributed innovation ecosystem, implemented five open calls, and funded and mentored 51 third-party projects developing open and trustworthy search and discovery technologies.
In WP1, data-driven scouting combined with traditional outreach identified more than 36,000 potential innovators and engaged nearly 3,000 experts across Europe. This ensured diverse participation and resulted in a balanced portfolio of high-quality proposals. An expert advisory board and a pool of 118 external evaluators ensured excellence and fairness in project selection.
WP2 designed and executed five transparent open calls, receiving 493 proposals and selecting 51 for funding. The process demonstrated that a decentralised funding model can operate effectively at scale while maintaining rigorous ethical and technical standards.
WP3 provided structured mentoring through Individual Mentoring Plans and ten added-value services, including technology mentoring, links to standards, and open science advice. The funded projects delivered deployable open-source solutions in areas such as privacy-preserving search, misinformation detection, large language models, and domain-specific services for health and food.
Technically, NGI Search created synergies with initiatives like Open Web Search and fostered collaboration across its portfolio, advancing state-of-the-art open-source solutions for trustworthy search. The integration of social sciences and humanities ensured attention to ethics, privacy, gender, and sustainability, embedding European values into all outcomes.
In WP1, data-driven scouting combined with traditional outreach identified more than 36,000 potential innovators and engaged nearly 3,000 experts across Europe. This ensured diverse participation and resulted in a balanced portfolio of high-quality proposals. An expert advisory board and a pool of 118 external evaluators ensured excellence and fairness in project selection.
WP2 designed and executed five transparent open calls, receiving 493 proposals and selecting 51 for funding. The process demonstrated that a decentralised funding model can operate effectively at scale while maintaining rigorous ethical and technical standards.
WP3 provided structured mentoring through Individual Mentoring Plans and ten added-value services, including technology mentoring, links to standards, and open science advice. The funded projects delivered deployable open-source solutions in areas such as privacy-preserving search, misinformation detection, large language models, and domain-specific services for health and food.
Technically, NGI Search created synergies with initiatives like Open Web Search and fostered collaboration across its portfolio, advancing state-of-the-art open-source solutions for trustworthy search. The integration of social sciences and humanities ensured attention to ethics, privacy, gender, and sustainability, embedding European values into all outcomes.
Over its duration, NGI Search supported 51 projects that advanced the state of the art in search and discovery technologies across Europe. The portfolio shows strong technical and social relevance, spanning privacy-preserving infrastructures, ethical AI, misinformation detection, large language models, and domain-specific services in health, food, and research. Many projects addressed core challenges in distributed architectures, semantic data processing, and human-centric interfaces.
Most reached high maturity: 32 delivered operational technologies and 14 achieved deployment-ready or internet-scalable solutions. Nearly half introduced entirely new approaches, confirming the project’s role as a driver of foundational innovation. Funded teams included SMEs, non-profits, universities, and individuals from over 20 European countries, ensuring diversity and breadth of expertise.
Around one-third of projects produced business or sustainability plans, exploring models from commercial services to open-source maintenance. Several created synergies with the Open Web Search initiative, enabling integration and scaling.
To ensure continued uptake, key needs include follow-up research and demonstration, better access to finance and market support, stronger regulatory and standardisation frameworks, and mechanisms to sustain open-source outcomes.
NGI Search has shown that Europe can mobilise distributed innovators to build open, transparent, and privacy-preserving alternatives to global search platforms, reinforcing European digital sovereignty and leadership in trustworthy information technologies.
Most reached high maturity: 32 delivered operational technologies and 14 achieved deployment-ready or internet-scalable solutions. Nearly half introduced entirely new approaches, confirming the project’s role as a driver of foundational innovation. Funded teams included SMEs, non-profits, universities, and individuals from over 20 European countries, ensuring diversity and breadth of expertise.
Around one-third of projects produced business or sustainability plans, exploring models from commercial services to open-source maintenance. Several created synergies with the Open Web Search initiative, enabling integration and scaling.
To ensure continued uptake, key needs include follow-up research and demonstration, better access to finance and market support, stronger regulatory and standardisation frameworks, and mechanisms to sustain open-source outcomes.
NGI Search has shown that Europe can mobilise distributed innovators to build open, transparent, and privacy-preserving alternatives to global search platforms, reinforcing European digital sovereignty and leadership in trustworthy information technologies.