Golden Devices and the EIC Accelerator: 3D-Printed Radar Antennas

Golden Devices, founded in April 2022 by Mark Sippel, Konstantin Lomakin and Andreas Hoffmann as a spin-off from the high-frequency engineering chair at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, 3D-prints radar and radio antennas in a single piece and coats them in metal. The company says its parts work at up to 300 GHz and weigh a sixth as much as conventional metal parts, according to Golden Devices. Its EIC Accelerator project, ACTIVATING, received an EU contribution of €1,779,750 towards a total cost of €2,542,500 and ran from July 2024 to June 2026, according to CORDIS. The project's stated next step was to "scale and automate the manufacturing process to realise series production" of waveguide antennas for autonomous-driving radar. CORDIS lists the project as closed but has published no results.

In September 2025, when Golden Devices won the IHK Mittelfranken founders' prize, it had 23 employees, and its largest single series had been 12,000 parts, according to IHK Nürnberg für Mittelfranken. Sippel said the priority was to expand capacity to more than one million parts a year. The founders started without outside investors: "Today our customers practically replace the investors," Sippel said, naming NASA among them. On 23 September 2026 the company reported delivering a radar system with 3D-printed waveguide antennas, built with Grizzly Electronic Systems of Bamberg, according to Golden Devices. No automotive customer has been named.

Where Golden Devices Stands Now

Golden Devices designs, prints, metallises and tests every part in one workshop in Erlangen. Its parts go into automotive radar, space payloads, drones, 6G communication and industrial sensing, and it contributed as a prototyping partner to mission studies for the INCUS Earth science programme, the company says. It holds about a dozen patents and applications, according to the IHK. Registry records show patent filings in 2023 and 2025 and a new trademark in January 2026, according to North Data. It plans to exhibit at European Microwave Week in London and electronica in Munich in late 2026.

The Technology: Antennas Printed in One Piece

Car radars today send and receive signals through flat antennas on printed circuit boards, which the CORDIS summary says limit performance. Three-dimensional waveguide antennas lose less signal and handle more bandwidth, but are usually made from several injection-moulded parts assembled in a split block. Golden Devices prints the polymer body in one piece and electroplates it with a thin copper-nickel layer. It prints material only where needed, cutting material use by about three quarters, according to the IHK.

What the EIC Award Promised, and What the Record Shows

ACTIVATING was meant to take Golden Devices from prototypes to automated series production of car radar antennas. The record shows series production of up to 12,000 parts and a founder who said capacity must reach a million parts a year. No carmaker or radar supplier has been named as a customer, and the project's results are not public.

1. Series productionPartial12,000-part series.
2. Automated manufacturingUnverifiedNo public data.
3. Automotive radar customersUnverifiedNone named.
4. Paying customersDeliveredNASA among them.

The Money

Apart from the EIC grant, the only public funding on record is €179,205 from the German government's EXIST research transfer programme in 2023, according to North Data. The founders say they have taken no outside investors, so customer revenue and grants have paid for the company's growth.

What Cannot Be Checked

Why Europe Should Care

Radar is one of the sensors that autonomous cars need, and the CORDIS summary says it could meet every requirement if its antennas improve. A European supplier of better antennas that can be made in volume would matter to Europe's car and radar industry. Golden Devices has the technology and paying customers; car-scale volume is still ahead of it.

The Verdict

Golden Devices and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.