Did the EIC Accelerator Pay Off for Be My Eyes' Video Help Desk?

Be My Eyes is a free app that connects blind and low-vision people with sighted volunteers through a live video call: the user points the phone camera at a label, a screen or a street, and a stranger describes what is there. In 2019 the European Commission selected its Danish company in the April round of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 pilot of today's EIC Accelerator, for a project called "Specialized Help": routing those video calls to the customer service desks of companies that pay for the link. The EU contribution was €1,081,570, according to CORDIS.

Seven years later the app is larger than ever. In March 2026 the company said it had reached 1 million blind and low-vision users and 10 million volunteers, according to Be My Eyes and Wikipedia. But the legal entity the EU funded no longer runs it. Answering whether the grant paid off means following two companies.

Two Companies Called Be My Eyes

The EC list names the winner as "BE MY EYES IVS" in Aarhus N, the only company on the project. That company, CVR 37073512, was founded on 7 September 2015, became Be My Eyes ApS in April 2020 and was renamed BME Holding ApS on 7 July 2025, according to the Danish company register as shown by DanskCVRAPI. It belongs to the two founders: Rockhill Holding ApS, ultimately owned by chief executive Christian Erfurt-Hansen, holds 50 to 66.67%, and HJ Wiberg Holding ApS, owned by inventor Hans Jørgen Wiberg, holds 33.33 to 50%, according to the register of owners and the owner pages of Rockhill Holding and HJ Wiberg Holding.

No outside investor appears among the Danish company's registered owners; the business they backed trades through a US company. The Danish company's 2018 accounts already relied on funding from "Be My Eyes Inc."; its 2023 and 2024 accounts say its operations depended on a cooperation agreement with, and financing from, Accessibly Inc., in which it held 35.63% at the end of 2023 and 23.50% at the end of 2024 (15.72% after full exercise of options). Be My Eyes' privacy policy names "Accessibly Inc., doing business as Be My Eyes, and our subsidiary Be My Eyes ApS", with a Dover, Delaware address. Where the business is headquartered is described differently: the company's own releases carry a San Francisco dateline (January 2025), while ImpactAlpha gives Denmark.

What Happened in 2025

On 17 March 2025 a new company, BME 2025 ApS, was registered in Copenhagen at Vesterbrogade 26, the address the old company had moved to in January. It is 100% owned by Accessibly Inc., and its directors include Jesper Hvirring Henriksen, whom Double Tap describes as Be My Eyes' chief technology officer. Two days after the founders' company dropped the name, on 9 July 2025, the new company became Be My Eyes ApS, according to DanskCVRAPI. Its first accounts, for March to December 2025, record DKK 1,738,821 of acquired goodwill, eight full-time staff on average and a profit of DKK 1,788,495, according to the filing.

The founders' company, in its accounts for January to August 2025, says it "carried out a divestment of its activities", handed the related assets and liabilities to the buyer and "no longer has operating activities". It booked a DKK 436,000 gain on the activities and a DKK 6.33 million gain on selling shares; its holding in capital interests, which the earlier notes identify as the Accessibly stake, stood at zero on 31 August 2025. Neither filing names the other party. The timing, the address, the goodwill and the name point to Accessibly's new subsidiary as the buyer of the activities, but no document seen for this article states it. Who bought the shares is not disclosed.

The Technology: A Help Desk That Can See

Most customer support assumes the caller can read a screen or a label. Specialized Help lets a blind user tap a company's name in the Be My Eyes app and land in a video call with a trained agent of that company, who sees through the phone camera; companies pay, users and volunteers do not, the company told CORDIS in 2021. Microsoft's Disability Answer Desk was the first partner, live since February 2018, according to AbilityNet and Pulse 2.0. The alternatives were phone lines and chat, which a blind caller cannot point at the problem, or relatives and the volunteer pool, which cannot discuss account details under a confidentiality agreement.

The idea was tested before the EU paid for it. A four-month Phase 1 study in 2018 (EU contribution €50,000) cited "formal agreements" with Microsoft and Lloyds Bank and forecast €11.7 million of revenue by 2024, according to CORDIS and its report.

What the EIC Project Promised and What It Delivered

The grant agreement was signed on 1 August 2019 and the project ran from 1 September 2019 to 30 November 2020, ending on its scheduled date. Its objective was a "fully commercialised" Specialized Help product. It forecast 185 licences and revenue of €54.3 million within five years of launch, 30 additional employees and 4.7% of the European market, according to CORDIS.

The final periodic report says the team built a "fully featured web application" for company support agents, with statistics and user management; a "fully functional prototype" of an accessible desktop app with one-way screen sharing; and a proof of concept that uses machine learning to spot credit cards, so that users do not show card numbers on camera. Partners named include Microsoft, Google, Procter & Gamble and Clearblue. A desktop app reached the public in May 2024, but it offered AI image and screen descriptions rather than calls with an agent, according to Be My Eyes and Double Tap. Calls with optional screen sharing and remote control arrived in February 2026 as Workplace Connect, part of a paid product for employers, according to the company; no independent report of it was found.

1. Web app for company support agentsDeliveredBuilt during the project; Microsoft, Google and P&G in use, per the final report.
2. Accessible desktop app with screen sharingPartlyPrototype in 2020; screen-sharing calls launched only in February 2026, by Accessibly.
3. Machine learning credit card detectionNot announcedProof of concept only; no release found.
4. 185 licences and €54.3M revenue in five yearsUnverifiedAccessibly publishes no revenue; it reported 361% revenue growth in 2024 without a base.
5. 30 additional employeesMissed in the granteeDanish staff peaked at 15 in 2020 and averaged 7 in 2025.

The Money Since the Award

Private money went to the US company. In February 2020 Be My Eyes raised a $2.8 million Series A led by Cultivation Capital, with earlier backing from Singularity University, Zendesk's founders and LightHouse for the Blind in San Francisco, according to Pulse 2.0 and EyeWire, which date the announcement 20 and 18 February respectively; Mike Buckley joined the board then. On 22 January 2025, with Buckley as chief executive, it raised $6.1 million in a Series A+ led by Enable Ventures, with ECMC Group's Educational Impact Fund, the National Federation of the Blind, LiteCap and Samaritan Partners, plus non-dilutive working capital, according to Be My Eyes, ImpactAlpha and Coverager.

The product moved towards AI. In March 2023 the company added a GPT-4 based "Virtual Volunteer", later called Be My AI, according to tech.eu and Wikipedia. In August 2024 it took over AppleVis, a volunteer-run site about Apple accessibility that was about to close, according to tech.eu.

The Danish grantee tells a flatter story. Its gross profit jumped to DKK 11.52 million in 2019, the year the project started (the accounts do not separate grant income), then never returned to that level. Its equity was negative in 2018 and again from 2020 to 2024, years in which its accounts flagged the loss of more than half its share capital. Only the 2025 sale lifted equity to DKK 6.32 million, according to its filings. The register shows 14 employees for 2025 while the accounts give a full-time average of 7; the chart uses the accounts.

Other Checks

The award was grant only. Be My Eyes does not appear in the EIC Fund portfolio, which lists 301 companies, and no EIC equity was found. Besides BEMYEYES and the 2018 Phase 1 study, no other EU project of the company was found on CORDIS. How the EU contribution was split between the Danish company's own work and services bought from Accessibly is not public.

Why Europe Should Care

The EU's European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) has applied since 28 June 2025 to services such as e-commerce, banking and telephony, according to the Commission and the University of Padua's Human Rights Centre. A video channel into company help desks fits that demand. The project's own objective counted 25 million blind and visually impaired people in the EU. The technology came from Denmark and the grant built part of it there, but the company that collects the revenue and holds the investors is American, and Be My Eyes' Danish entity is now a subsidiary of that US company.

The Verdict

Be My Eyes, Accessibly Inc., BME Holding ApS and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.