innosabi Turned an EIC Accelerator Grant Into a Sale to Questel

innosabi sells software that large companies use to collect ideas from staff, customers and suppliers and to run innovation projects with them. In the European Commission's list of June 2019 winners of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Munich company appears alone for its project, innosabi GALAXY, with no partner company. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,798,125 towards a total cost of €2,568,750, a project start on 1 December 2019 and a planned end on 30 November 2021. The project did not run that long. On 19 January 2021 the French intellectual property software group Questel announced it had bought a majority stake in innosabi, according to Questel and the seller's adviser Clipperton. CORDIS states that the EU project was "terminated on 23 March 2021".

The company's own final report on CORDIS draws the line from one event to the other: "the SME Instrument project was a major driver to join forces with the Questel group as of January 2021", it says in the periodic report. Five years later innosabi was sold again, this time to Collaboration.Ai, a software company in Saint Paul, Minnesota, which announced the deal on 8 January 2026, according to AI Journal and Pulse 2.0.

Where innosabi Stands Now

innosabi is a subsidiary of Collaboration.Ai. The buyer described itself as an AI software company for "critical programs across government and industry" with two platforms, NetworkOS and CrowdVector, and said innosabi serves more than 300 organisations and 1.2 million active users in over 30 countries, according to AI Journal; Pulse 2.0 reported the same figures and that financial terms were not disclosed. The date differs by source: innosabi's website dates the acquisition to 2 January 2026, the press release is dated 8 January and Pulse 2.0 published on 10 January. Neither release names the seller. The North Data summary of the commercial register shows that a profit transfer agreement with Questel Germany Holding GmbH, registered in December 2023, was recorded as ended on 19 January 2026, which fits Questel's exit, but the register summary does not show the new shareholder by name.

The company is still registered in Munich, and North Data lists balance sheets filed for every year to 2024, the last one published on 2 March 2026. The figures themselves sit behind North Data's paywall and could not be checked for this article. Jan Fischer, a co-founder, is named as managing director in the 2026 announcement. Co-founder and long-time chief executive Catharina van Delden stopped being a managing director in July 2021, and co-founder Hans-Peter Heid in September 2022, according to the same register summary.

The Technology: One Platform for Ideas, Customers and Suppliers

innosabi began as a student project of four TU Munich alumni, according to Startbase, and ran a crowdsourcing platform where companies asked outsiders for product ideas. Munich Startup quoted van Delden calling the founders "the biggest masters of bootstrapping Munich has ever seen" and reported that the company had taken only angel money. No venture capital round has been found for the company before the 2021 sale.

The CORDIS objective describes the problem as large corporations losing "the overview of available competencies, knowledge, and direct contact to their stakeholders", with hierarchies slowing decisions. The GALAXY project, developed with the pilot customers Bayer and Siemens, was meant to put its tools for employees, customers and suppliers into one platform and connect it to outside data such as Crunchbase and LinkedIn, the CORDIS objective says. The company claimed customers could process ideas "2x faster" and cut time to market by 30%. No independent measurement of those figures has been published.

The product today is sold as six modules, Insight, Idea, Community, Partner, Startup and Project, according to innosabi's website. That structure matches what the GALAXY project set out to build, though the GALAXY name itself is no longer used. Named customers have changed over time: the 2019 CORDIS summary lists Daimler, Bayer, Siemens and Allianz; the 2021 Questel release lists Siemens, Daimler, Postbank, Deutsche Telekom and Allianz; the current website names Kärcher, Danone, Lufthansa, Roche, BASF and Holcim.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The final report on CORDIS covers 1 December 2020 to 30 November 2021, although the project had been terminated on 23 March 2021. It says the existing platforms were migrated into GALAXY, set-up time at clients was "drastically reduced", and interfaces to Crunchbase, TrendOne, EPO patent data and other sources were built, along with a workflow engine, global search, analytics and OAuth2 login for outside communities. It also reports a standardised onboarding process, a larger sales team and a new US office in Minneapolis. The only listed deliverable is an updated project website. Why the project ended eight months early is not stated on CORDIS; it ended two months after Questel took control. How much of the €1.8 million was paid out is not public.

1. GALAXY platform with external data interfacesDeliveredReported on CORDIS; modular suite on sale today.
2. Pilots with Bayer and SiemensNot verifiedNo result of either pilot has been published.
3. Run the full 24-month projectNot achievedTerminated 23 March 2021 after 16 months.
4. €16.3M turnover and 140 staff by 2023Not achievedNever reported; 55 staff at the 2021 sale.
5. International expansionPartlyUS office opened in 2020; now owned by a US company.

The Growth Plan Against the Numbers

The CORDIS objective gave turnover of €2.8 million and 45 employees in 2018, growth of 40% a year since 2015, and a plan to reach €16.3 million and 140 employees in 2023. Two years into that plan, Questel's release gave 55 employees in its first paragraph and "44 full-time employees" in its company description; Clipperton also gave 55. No staff or revenue figure for innosabi has been published since. Whether the 2023 target was reached cannot be established from public sources, and neither innosabi, Questel nor Collaboration.Ai has said it was.

The EU grant was not innosabi's first public money. North Data lists German federal research grants to the company since 2013, including €194,151 from September 2019 for a citizen participation platform in the Chemnitz mobility project NUMIC; that figure was not checked against a second source. CORDIS shows no other EU project for the company, and innosabi does not appear in the EIC Fund portfolio; the 2019 award was a grant only.

Why Europe Should Care

The EU's Digital Decade programme sets a "human-centric, sustainable vision" for empowering citizens and businesses, with digital business as one of its four target areas. In 2021 Clipperton sold the Questel deal as "a truly Pan-European success story in a largely US-dominated sector" and called innosabi "the only European provider of scale" in a market shaped by European data privacy rules. Five years later the same company belongs to a firm in Minnesota. The grant helped a European software maker grow and find a European buyer, which the company itself credits to the EIC project; the longer arc ends in the hands of a US owner whose stated focus includes government programmes.

The Verdict

innosabi, Questel, Collaboration.Ai and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.