Cyraco: EIC Accelerator Grant for Remote Audits, and What Followed

Factory audits for importers still mostly mean an inspector on a plane, an appointment the supplier knows about in advance, and a paper report. Cyraco, a Cologne company founded in 2017 by Constantin Kontargyris, a former group CIO of TÜV Rheinland, set out to replace that trip with a box of cameras and sensors in the factory, an app on a phone or a pair of smart glasses, and software that checks what the camera sees. In the European Innovation Council's October 2020 round it was selected for a grant-only award, listed by the Commission as "CyRaCo" of Bergisch Gladbach, according to the EC list of EIC Accelerator pilot winners. The list names no other company for the project.

The EU contribution was €1,917,549.38 towards a total cost of €2,739,356.25, according to CORDIS. In its proposal summary the company forecast "over 700,000 inspections per year" and "over €55 million in revenues" by 2027. Three and a half years after the project ended, the public record shows a working product, a team of about a dozen people and a €50,000 pilot with the Spanish rail operator Renfe.

Where Cyraco Stands Now

Cyraco is operating. Its website sells a platform for "automated inspections and maintenance" with real-time computer vision, instant reports and "100% digital traceability", and its team page lists 12 people across offices in Cologne and Thessaloniki. The company register shows recent activity: accounts for 2024 were filed in January 2026, and in September 2026 a change was published under which Walter Bandt, a managing director registered in April 2025, is no longer listed, according to North Data. Implisense still names both Bandt and Kontargyris as managing directors. No insolvency or liquidation is recorded in either source.

The pitch has moved. The EU project was framed around importers checking far-away suppliers. Today the site's sector page addresses testing and certification firms, factory quality control and construction sites, and the product page describes AR-guided maintenance workflows, defect and protective-equipment detection, and connectors to SAP PM and IBM Maximo. The core technology, cameras plus AI plus AR feeding an audit trail, is the one the EU funded, so this reads as a widening of the market rather than a change of product.

The Technology: An Inspector Who Never Travels

The first version was a box. A 2017 German patent application describes a monitoring device at one site made of a lockable container with a mobile unit inside, a control device at another site that can open and close the container and evaluate the data, and a database of target values, according to the DPMA register and Google Patents. The idea answers the weakness that Cyraco's Phase 1 report named: pre-arranged inspections give "factory operators enough time to modify actual manufacturing conditions". A box already on site can be opened when the auditor chooses.

The EIC project added augmented reality, smart-glasses apps and a custom AI layer to that hardware. In a 2023 interview with the German Society for Quality, Kontargyris described tools on smartphones or smart glasses that set walking routes through a factory, measure and document findings, detect protective equipment and translate foreign labels, and AI that estimates a worker's age to flag child labour before blurring every face, according to QZ Qualität und Zuverlässigkeit. He also said that "the auditor is the decisive factor" (translated), which is a narrower claim than the "completely automated and fail-safe factory inspections" in the CORDIS objective.

Remote and video audits are not new; what Cyraco claims as its difference is the combination of fixed on-site hardware, AR guidance and automated analysis in one subscription platform. The savings it cites have drifted between documents: 90% lower inspection costs in the Phase 1 summary, 80% in the EIC project report, and "up to 80%" lower operating costs and 300% higher efficiency in the material Renfe's programme published, per Merca2. None of these figures comes from an independent test.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

Cyraco first won a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 grant for a feasibility study of the "CyRaCo Box", which ran from August to December 2019, according to CORDIS. That summary forecast "almost a thousand factory inspections" and "over €16 million in revenues" by 2024. The EIC Accelerator pilot project followed: selected at the 7 October 2020 cut-off, signed on 19 May 2021 and run from 1 May 2021 to 30 April 2023, with the project closed on schedule, according to CORDIS.

The grant was shared with a Greek affiliate. CYRACO GREECE MONOPROSOPI IKE in Thermi near Thessaloniki took part as a linked third party with a net EU contribution of €548,843.75, leaving €1,368,705.63 for the German company, according to CORDIS. The Greek company's register entry could not be found in public sources.

The final periodic report says the first year built the expanded AR functions, a cross-compatible smart-glasses app, an improved CYRACO Box, the core platform and "a custom Artificial Intelligence architecture", all "successfully tested, validated and integrated". In the second year the platform was "field-tested with the support of Early Adopters, resulting in a commercial validation of the product", and the team attended trade fairs and formed "several key technological and commercial partnerships". None of the early adopters or partners is named. The only public deliverable on the results page is an "updated web presence".

1. AR, smart-glasses app and AI layer built into the platformDeliveredReported as integrated in the CORDIS report; the product page sells it today.
2. Field tests with early adoptersPartly shownClaimed in the report; no early adopter is named anywhere.
3. "Patent-pending" platformPending since 2017The only related application found lists Mora-Net GmbH and PAKONET GmbH as applicants, not Cyraco, and has not been granted (DPMA).
4. Commercial scale-up toward 700,000 inspections and €55M revenue a year by 2027Not achievedNo customer volumes, revenue or funding round announced; balance sheet total of €339,082 in 2022 (Implisense).
5. Phase 1 forecast of €16M revenue by 2024Not achievedNo revenue figure has been published; nothing suggests sales on that scale.

A grant pays for development, and the development was done: the platform exists and is on sale. The commercial plan the proposal was judged on has not appeared in any public source, and with a year to go to 2027 the gap between the forecast and the record is wide.

What Has Happened Since the Award

The most concrete result is in rail. In June 2025 Renfe's start-up programme TrenLab chose Cyraco as one of four winners of its sixth call, for the challenge of automating and digitising rolling stock maintenance, with €50,000 to build a six-month pilot and the chance of a contract worth up to €1 million, according to Capital Riesgo. The pilot digitises technical documentation and redesigns train inspection with digital checklists, Merca2 reported, and Cyraco presented its remote inspection system at the programme's demo day, with Renfe still to assess each pilot, according to Railway News. No Renfe contract with Cyraco has been announced since.

The homepage also shows the logos of Renfe and Valenciaport, the port authority of Valencia, under "references". No public source describes work for the port. CB Insights lists a single $60,000 accelerator round with TrenLab and Opentop, the Valencia port's innovation hub, as investors; no equity round from venture investors has been announced.

Cyraco was a grant-only winner, and it does not appear among the roughly 320 companies on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked on all 16 pages on 18 October 2026. CORDIS lists no other EU project for the company beyond the two above.

The Money

Cyraco has filed annual accounts for 2021, 2022 and 2024, and North Data lists no filing for 2023. The figures sit behind paywalls; the only public number is a balance sheet total of €339,082 for 2022, after the bulk of the grant period, from Implisense, which also classes Cyraco as a micro enterprise. Equity, results, revenue and staff numbers from the filed accounts could not be verified.

Why Europe Should Care

Cyraco's business case rests on supply chain law. Germany's Supply Chain Due Diligence Act has applied since 1 January 2023 to companies with at least 3,000 staff and since 2024 to those with at least 1,000, though in October 2025 the federal government moved to scrap its reporting duty retroactively, according to the export control office BAFA. At EU level, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive of 13 June 2024 requires companies to monitor human rights and environmental impacts in their chains of activities. The December 2025 Omnibus deal cut its scope to companies with more than 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion turnover and moved application to 2029, according to the European Outdoor Group.

Both moves shrink the pool of companies obliged to audit suppliers, the demand Kontargyris called the reason digital audits would be needed. The other argument, cutting the travel behind supplier audits, which Cyraco put at a 95% lower carbon footprint in its EIC project report, still holds in principle, but it is a company estimate. Cyraco's turn toward maintenance and construction inspections, where the buyer is the asset owner, makes it less dependent on that law.

The Verdict

Cyraco has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.