Venture Capital Continuity and Hard Commercialisation in European Physical Technology: A public-source cohort study using the 2021 EIC Accelerator as an institutional anchor

European venture and innovation policy frequently treats later financing as evidence that technology ventures are progressing. Yet a new round and a hard commercial transition do not measure the same event. This study examines that distinction in a selected cohort of 48 European physical-technology ventures anchored to the June and October 2021 EIC Accelerator announcements. It separates pre-anchor institutional venture capital, later financing continuity, baseline commercial maturity and attainment of a strict commercial endpoint over fixed observation windows. The analysis indicates that prior VC is more visibly associated with subsequent capital continuity than with a hard commercial transition once ventures already commercial at the anchor are separated. It also shows that a common endpoint clock can encode sector pathway length and that public-source non-events create meaningful uncertainty. The study is exploratory and observational. It does not estimate a causal effect of VC or the EIC Accelerator. Its contribution is a disciplined empirical separation of financing, starting state and commercial outcome, with implications for investors, policymakers and venture-support institutions.