EIC Accelerator Check: DataBeacon and Its Runway Capacity AI

Europe's busiest airports run out of runway long before they run out of terminal space, and building a new runway takes land and decades. DataBeacon, a Madrid start-up founded in 2019, told the European Innovation Council it could get more flights out of existing runways with an artificial intelligence platform that fuses more than 30 data sources into real-time capacity predictions. The EIC selected the project, SmartRunway, in the January 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, and the EU paid €1,660,987.13 of its €2,372,838.75 cost.

Six years later the runway service is not on sale. The company's product line is built around flight information displays for air traffic control towers and replay tools for safety reviews, according to its website. On 13 May 2026 a Madrid commercial court declared DataBeacon SL insolvent at its own request and appointed an insolvency administrator, according to the Official Gazette of the Commercial Register (BORME) of 9 June 2026.

In Insolvency, With the Website Still Selling

The court order of 13 May 2026, in proceedings 286/2026 before the commercial section of Madrid's Tribunal de Instancia, declared a voluntary insolvency (concurso voluntario), named Abencys Reestructuraciones SLP as insolvency administrator and placed the management's powers under intervention or suspension, according to the BORME entry. The register summaries on Empresia and Infoempresa show the same proceedings, and Infoempresa lists the company's status as "Concursal". The BORME notice does not say whether the company is to be restructured or liquidated, and no later notice about the outcome could be found.

Two earlier register entries point to the strain. The powers of attorney of Paula López-Catalá, appointed a few days after the company was set up and named as DataBeacon's press contact in its 2023 announcements, were revoked in an entry registered on 4 March 2026. And DataBeacon lost its status as an "empresa emergente", a start-up category under Spain's Law 28/2022 that it had held since January 2024, with effect from 27 May 2026, according to Empresia.

The company's website still offered demonstrations in October 2026 and did not mention the insolvency.

The Technology: From Runway Predictions to a Tower Display

The SmartRunway proposal, as summarised on CORDIS, started from congestion: more than 15% of European airport traffic arrives in peak periods, holding aircraft in the air and burning fuel. DataBeacon promised "real-time, reliable predictions" of runway capacity from more than 30 data sources, "automatically cleaned, anonymised and fused", sold as a service. It said the incumbents sold "expensive equipment" in long development cycles, and that it had "a group of innovative early customers, already secured". The proposal had earlier won a Seal of Excellence with a score of 13.40.

By the project's end the description had changed. The final periodic report, covering June 2021 to April 2023, describes Victor5, a cloud platform for air traffic control. Its "first ready-to-deploy use case" was a contingency tool: a portable display that keeps controllers aware of traffic when their main systems fail or they have to leave the tower. The report also lists planning and workload assistants for controllers, post-operational safety and environmental analysis, and a set of machine learning algorithms called Level5. Runway capacity, the subject of the grant, is not among the results it reports.

Today's lead product, ROMEO5 Air, builds a traffic picture for aerodromes without radar from ADS-B and Mode-S signals, which aircraft broadcast themselves, and is designed against the UK Civil Aviation Authority's CAP670 requirements, according to the product page. The company says its display "shall not be used for the provision of air traffic surveillance services"; it is a situational-awareness aid. The difference from established systems is cost: a receiver and a server instead of a radar estate.

What SmartRunway Promised, and What the Record Shows

SmartRunway was a grant-only award in the European Commission's list of companies selected at the 8 January 2020 cut-off, where DataBeacon S.L. of Madrid is the only beneficiary named for the project. The grant agreement was signed on 27 May 2020, and the project ran from 1 June 2020 to 30 April 2023 under the Horizon 2020 SME instrument phase 2 scheme, according to CORDIS. CORDIS lists the project as closed and publishes no deliverables or publications.

1. Data platform fusing 30+ sourcesDeliveredVictor5 described in the final report and launched in March 2023, per ATC Network.
2. Real-time runway capacity predictionsPartlyNot in the final report. A 2025 validation with Saerco, funded separately by Spain's CDTI, reported time-to-threshold predictions above 95% accurate at Madrid-Barajas; no customer for a runway service has been announced.
3. Emissions and fuel analysisPartlyListed as ECHO5 on the website; no customer named.
4. Delay management and network operationsNot achievedFlow management and network complexity are still "in development", per the website.
5. "Early customers, already secured"Not achievedNone named during the project; the first named airport customer was announced in January 2025.

The project delivered software, and the company kept building on it. But the service the EU paid for, runway capacity predictions sold to congested airports, was not launched during the project or announced since, and the network applications are still described as future products. That makes SmartRunway, at best, partly delivered.

What DataBeacon Achieved After the Grant

The commercial record after 2023 is a series of announcements, mostly from DataBeacon itself, around the ROMEO5 display.

1. March 2024
   uAvionix data feedDataBeacon and the US avionics maker uAvionix announced the planned use of uAvionix's FlightLine ADS-B data in Romeo5, according to sUAS News. No customer was named.
2. March 2024
   Saerco projectWith the Spanish air traffic services provider Saerco, a digital twin and controller assistant under Spain's 2023 Aeronautical Technology Programme, financed by CDTI with Next Generation EU funds, per ATC Network. The amount is not public.
3. January 2025
   Gloucestershire AirportSelected Romeo5 for its tower and hoped to use it by spring 2025, pending CAA approval, according to the airport and FLYER. Whether it went live could not be verified.
4. May 2025
   Leeds Bradford trialA proof of concept of Romeo5 Ground with an ADS-B receiver at Leeds Bradford Airport, per ATC Network; the same month, Romeo5 Dashboards for runway use, taxiing and stands.
5. July 2025
   Saerco validationNine controllers and flight information officers tested the digital twin for two weeks; DataBeacon reported time-to-threshold predictions over 95% accurate at Madrid-Barajas, per ATC Network.

DataBeacon also kept winning EU research money. It is a partner in SafeTeam, a Horizon Europe project on how air traffic controllers can work safely with digital assistants, coordinated by the Madrid research institute Innaxis, with an EU contribution of €496,387.50 for DataBeacon between July 2022 and June 2025. The DataBeacon platform is also named as the data infrastructure of two other EU projects, Dispatcher3 and SafeOPS, but DataBeacon SL is not a partner in either.

The Money

No private funding round, investor or acquisition could be found. CB Insights lists the company as founded in 2019 in Madrid without naming investors, and DataBeacon is not among the 326 companies on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which fits a grant-only award. Its share capital is still the €3,000 it was founded with, according to Empresia, which records no capital increase.

DataBeacon filed accounts for 2020 to 2024 with the Madrid register, but their figures are behind paid reports. The free summaries give only ranges: annual turnover below €500,000 according to Empresia, below €2 million and 1 to 9 employees according to Infoempresa. The two ranges do not conflict, but neither shows a company that grew after receiving €2.16 million in EU grants.

Why Europe Should Care

Airspace capacity is a standing EU problem. The Commission's Single European Sky policy aims at scalable air traffic control capacity and says delays push aircraft onto more fuel-inefficient routes. Its technology pillar, the SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking, has automation and artificial intelligence among its priorities for a "Digital European Sky". A small European supplier of cheap, cloud-based tools for controllers fits that agenda, and DataBeacon's work on SafeTeam shows the EU kept treating it as part of it.

But the market DataBeacon ended up in is narrow: towers at small aerodromes that have no radar. The bigger promise in its EIC proposal, giving congested hubs more capacity from their existing runways, is where the European problem sits, and that is the part it did not commercialise.

The Verdict

DataBeacon and its insolvency administrator have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.