Justinmind's EIC Accelerator Bet on XR Prototyping, Revisited

Justinmind SL, a Barcelona company incorporated in September 2002, sold a desktop tool that lets designers build clickable prototypes of web and mobile apps without writing code. In the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 round of 3 April 2019, the forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, it was selected for JUSTINMIND-XR, a project to extend that tool to virtual, augmented and mixed reality, according to the European Commission's list of selected companies, which names Justinmind as the only beneficiary of the project. The EU contributed €1,106,767.38 to a €1,581,096.25 project that ran from 1 September 2019 to 31 October 2021, according to CORDIS.

The VR and AR feature shipped. The company did not survive. On 21 March 2025, Commercial Court No. 5 of Barcelona declared Justinmind in voluntary insolvency (concurso voluntario 327/2025) and opened the liquidation phase in the same order; the company was dissolved by judicial decision and an insolvency administrator replaced its two joint administrators, co-founder Xavier Renom and Pau González Navarro, according to the Official Gazette of the Commercial Register (BORME) of 2 June 2025. The register entries are also listed by Empresia, and Infoempresa gives the company's status as "Disuelta" (dissolved).

A Live Website, a Company in Liquidation

The Justinmind website still offers the software for download and sells plans from $19 per editor a month, and its footer reads "© 2026 Justinmind", according to the pricing page. The product itself has not changed since the insolvency: the last entry on the company's release notes page is version 10.7.4, dated 12 March 2025, nine days before the court order. Who is collecting the subscription revenue today, whether the liquidator is selling the software as a going concern, and whether a buyer has been found could not be verified: no sale of the business has been published in the sources checked for this article.

The register shows the company's governance changing well before the court case. On 2 October 2023 its board of directors, which included Renom, González and the La Caixa venture vehicle Caixa Capital TIC, was replaced by two joint administrators, Xavier Renom and Pau González Navarro, according to entries reproduced by Empresia. In April 2025, after the insolvency order, the registered office moved from Avenida Meridiana in Barcelona to Badalona, according to the BORME of 8 April 2025. On 27 May 2025 the registrar entered Pedro Franco Corrons as insolvency administrator and removed both joint administrators.

The Technology: Clickable Mock-ups in a Headset

Prototyping tools such as Justinmind, Axure or Figma let designers mock up the screens of an app and wire them together so that users can click through them before any code exists. JUSTINMIND-XR set out to carry that idea into three dimensions. The project summary on CORDIS promised "the first Rapid Prototyping Platform (RPP) for designing Spatial Computing Software Applications", a "SaaS Cloud Platform to design XR applications without writing a single line of code", and the use of "BigData Analytics, Deep Learning" in a drag-and-drop editor.

What shipped is narrower and more practical. Designers place their existing 2D prototype screens in a 3D scene, either on a printed marker in the real world for augmented reality or inside a downloaded .glb 3D model for virtual reality, and open the result through a QR code in a headset or phone browser using the WebXR standard, according to Justinmind's setup guide, which names Oculus, HTC Vive and phones with Bluetooth controllers, and says AR on iPhone needs Mozilla's XR Viewer. The product page describes testing an app "in an airplane cabin, the inside of a car, or a kitchen with a smart fridge". The editor itself stays a desktop download, with sharing and collaboration online, rather than the cloud platform the summary described.

The approach targets a real gap: most XR development tools, such as game engines, are built for programmers, while design teams test interfaces on flat screens. The CORDIS article says the team coined the term "XRgonomics" for testing interfaces that combine a physical object, such as a car dashboard or a medical device, with a digital screen. Justinmind's founder told El Español in January 2021 that the company was exploring mixed reality with the Mercedes-Benz research centre in Sunnyvale. No published case study shows a customer building a product with the XR feature.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

The final periodic report, covering August 2020 to October 2021, says the team "did the final testing and the packaging of the product, creating the installers and the product can be downloaded from our website, achieving the final and most important Milestone in the project". It links a product page, a launch post, the setup guide and a tutorial video. That video was published on 4 August 2021 and had 255 views when checked for this article. A CORDIS results article said the XR update was scheduled to launch in October 2021, just before the project ended, so the technical work landed on time.

CORDIS lists eight public reports for the project, including device integrations, WebXR test scenarios and a final evaluation, plus the release itself, described as "public and purchasable", on its results page. One oddity: Justinmind's own release notes, which list every version from 2015 to 2025, never mention VR, AR or WebXR, so the exact version that introduced the feature cannot be pinned down from the company's records.

1. Code-free VR and AR prototypingDeliveredLive product page and setup guide.
2. Public, purchasable release by project endDeliveredFinal report, October 2021.
3. Many headsets via WebXRPartlyOculus, HTC Vive, phones; iPhone AR needs a separate app.
4. SaaS cloud platform with deep learningNot shownDesktop download; no public AI feature.
5. $30M to $40M turnover in 4 to 5 yearsMissedRevenue under €500,000 per Empresia; insolvent 2025.
6. 80+ high-skilled XR hiresMissed11 staff in register data.

The Business Behind the Grant

Justinmind was small for a company that claimed 2 million users, a figure CORDIS repeats from the company and that could not be checked independently. In January 2021 it had 30 employees, most in Barcelona, an office in San Francisco opened around 2012, users such as Microsoft, Adobe, Stanford and the US tax authority, and backing from friends and family, La Caixa's venture arm and the Catalan agency Acció, according to El Español. CB Insights records a seed round with Caixa Capital Risc in March 2012; the amount is not public.

Filed accounts are not free to read in Spain, so the figures below come from aggregators and disagree with each other. Empresia puts the company's annual revenue below €500,000 and its staff at 11, with 2023 as the last year of deposited accounts. Infoempresa gives a wider band of 10 to 49 employees and revenue below €2 million. Either way, the company stood far from the $30 million to $40 million in annual turnover and 80 new hires that the project summary targeted within four to five years. No funding round after the EIC grant has been reported, and Justinmind is not in the EIC Fund's list of equity investments, which fits a grant-only award.

Justinmind was not the only older prototyping vendor under strain: InVision, another prototyping veteran, said it would close its design collaboration services by the end of 2024, according to AlternativeTo. The company's insolvency filing does not state reasons, and the court documents are not public.

Why It Matters for Europe

On 11 July 2023 the European Commission adopted a strategy on Web 4.0 and virtual worlds that aims to build a European industrial ecosystem for immersive technology, to train virtual-world specialists and to keep these worlds from being "dominated by a few big players", as summarised by Bird & Bird and recorded by European Sources Online. Tools that let non-programmers design immersive interfaces fit that aim, and Justinmind's use of the open WebXR standard instead of a single vendor's headset ecosystem matched the strategy's push for open, interoperable standards. A European design tool with a working XR feature is now in liquidation, and no buyer for its software or its user base has been announced.

The Verdict

Justinmind, its insolvency administrator and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.