Introducing The Bridge

We’re officially launching The Bridge, an eight-week residency designed to fast-track Europe’s most ambitious early-stage founders into the San Francisco Bay Area. Applications are now open for the inaugural cohort, which begins in April 2026.

The Bridge offers Europe’s top entrepreneurial talent the fastest, most direct path to founding a company in the US from scratch. Selected participants will arrive at the earliest stage—pre-team, pre-idea—and spend eight weeks living, ideating, and building together in a dedicated Hacker House in the Bay Area. We will provide full housing and board, support with visas, and the structure to turn ambition into a globally significant company.

During the residency, founders will:

• Form teams, test and validate ideas, and launch startups from zero.
• Access up to $250,000 in initial funding from EF within 8–12 weeks, with the possibility of securing up to $3 million in future EF rounds.
• Receive $600,000 worth of credits from partners including OpenAI, Anthropic, and GitHub.
• Work with top Silicon Valley advisors and meet weekly with experienced founders, operators, and investors.
• Pitch at an in-person Demo Day to US investors.

The program builds on the success of our first Residency in Germany earlier this year, and EF’s LAUNCH program in San Francisco which kicked off in January 2024. Companies that joined EF’s LAUNCH have already seen strong results: with Seed valuations 85% higher for UK startups and 68% higher for French startups compared to previous cohorts not based in The Bay. The Bridge is the answer for European founders looking to build and scale in the US as quickly as possible. 

At EF, we are driven by a mission to discover the next generation of exceptional founders and support them relentlessly in achieving outlier outcomes. The Bridge was created in response to what we heard from founders: a strong desire to move to the US as early as possible and be part of the AI revolution.

As our portfolio surpasses $13 billion in value, we are also expanding our European presence too. Our Paris team is building deeper connections with aspiring founder communities in Paris, Zurich, Stockholm, and Munich. Meanwhile, all European programs outside The Bridge will now be consolidated in London, with the Paris-based team leading EF’s new European Scout network.

The Bridge will run several cohorts each year, welcoming 40–50 entrepreneurs per group. It is designed to strip away the barriers European founders often face when moving to San Francisco—making it possible to arrive as an individual and leave with a cofounder, a company, and the backing to build at scale.

Applications are now open for the first cohort, beginning April 2026.