Lios Needed Two EIC Accelerator Rounds for Low-Frequency Noise

Restored Hearing Limited, which trades as Lios, makes SoundBounce, a thin acoustic material meant to stop the low, rumbling noise of engines, fans and rocket launches that thick foam and heavy panels struggle to block. The European Union has paid for it twice. In January 2019 the company won a Horizon 2020 grant in the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 for TANDEM, a project to take SoundBounce "to TRL 9", meaning a finished product in commercial use, with an EU contribution of €2,312,528.58, according to CORDIS. In March 2025 it won again, this time in the Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator, for MUSE, a project in which "pilot production will launch the first products on the market containing SoundBounce", with an EU contribution of €2,499,999, according to CORDIS.

The second objective describes what the first was meant to achieve. Between the two awards the company won a European Inventor Award, signed three contracts with the European Space Agency and changed its brand, but no SoundBounce product for buildings, cars or aircraft has been announced. In a post dated 19 July 2026, Lios said it was preparing "to deliver our first pilot products from the production line in Q4", according to its website.

Where Lios Stands in 2026

The company is active. Restored Hearing Limited has the status "Normal" in the Irish company register, filed its latest annual return in March 2026 with accounts to 30 April 2025, and filed a change of registered office in July 2026, according to SoloCheck; OpenCorporates also shows the status "Normal" and the March 2026 filings, but still the old address at the Business Innovation Centre in Sligo. Lios's website and SoloCheck give 33 Westland Square, Dublin 2. The register classes it as a small company, and its filed figures for equity, results and staff are not freely available, so its revenue and losses could not be verified.

The clearest recent business news is from space. In May 2026 Lios renewed its contract with the European Space Agency for a second time, a co-funded phase three "worth nearly €2m" to scale up manufacturing of SoundBounce panels over two years and run flight qualification tests, according to Silicon Republic and The Advanced Materials Show. In October 2026 Lios won the Award for Composites Excellence for "Most Creative Application" at CAMX in Atlanta, according to the company; no independent report of that award could be found.

The Technology: A Gel That Gives Way

Low-frequency sound has long wavelengths, so conventional absorbers have to be thick or heavy to stop it. SoundBounce takes a different route. It combines a cellular structure with a thixotropic gel inside the cells, a material that turns liquid when agitated and sets again when left still, and so takes energy out of sound and vibration, according to the European Patent Office, which gave Togher and O'Carroll its European Inventor Award in the SME category on 4 July 2023. CORDIS describes the same build: "an active material enclosed in an adaptable and customisable housing", in a results article on TANDEM.

The idea came out of hearing protection. The founders' first product, Sound Relief, was a tinnitus therapy, and SoundBounce first appeared as a filter material for headphones and earmuffs, for which a Kickstarter campaign raised more than its €15,000 target in January 2017, according to Silicon Republic and the Irish Times. By the time of the 2019 grant the company was aiming at cars, buildings, power generation and aircraft.

TANDEM: What the 2019 Grant Promised

The European Commission's list of EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 winners names Restored Hearing Ltd. of Sligo, with the website restoredhearing.com, among the companies selected at the 9 January 2019 cut-off, and lists no partner company for TANDEM. CORDIS confirms Restored Hearing as the sole participant. The grant agreement was signed on 24 May 2019 and the project ran from 1 June 2019 to 31 May 2022, at a total cost of €3,513,982.25. The company announced the €2.3 million in October 2019 and said it was adding 18 jobs in Dublin, according to the Irish Times and its own announcement, which promised to "complete commercialisation" and launch globally.

The closing report lists real technical progress: large SoundBounce samples were made and tested to ISO standards, two manufacturing methods were found viable for series production, mathematical modelling became part of product development, and "a technology transfer package was created to progress to pilot production, the next step on the transition to industrial scale". It reports a pipeline of customers in aerospace, cars, home appliances and construction and joint development work with "market leaders", but names none of them. Pilot production, the report says, was still to come.

1. Scale up the material to large samplesDeliveredLarge samples produced and tested to ISO standards, per the closing report.
2. Route to series manufacturingPartlyTwo methods identified and a transfer package written; pilot production only funded in 2025 under MUSE.
3. TRL 9 and market commercialisationNot achievedNo product announced by May 2022 or since; first pilot products due in Q4, per Lios in July 2026.
4. Customers designing SoundBounce inNot announcedA "pipeline" is reported, but no customer is named by CORDIS, the company or the press.
5. 18 new jobs in DublinUnverifiedStaff figures are not freely available; an ESA flyer gives more than 14 staff in 2026.

For a grant that funded development rather than sales, TANDEM produced usable engineering results. Measured against its own stated goal, a market-ready product at TRL 9, it fell short, and the company needed a second EU award to start the production step the first one ended on.

What Came After: Space, Prizes and a Second Award

The European Space Agency became the most visible partner. In January 2021 Lios signed a 12-month ESA contract to develop and test acoustic components for future launch vehicles under the Future Launchers Preparatory Programme, according to the CORDIS results article; Lios's About page dates the contract to 2020, and Silicon Republic says the work began in 2021. In January 2025 Togher told the Irish Times that Lios was working with ESA "for the second time" on protecting payloads in rocket nose cones. Lios's own flyer for ESA's spring 2026 session says that ArianeGroup and Beyond Gravity contributed flight-ready specifications in phase one, that phase two cut the material's area density more than sixfold, and that the aerospace version "achieved TRL 3", with phase three aiming at TRL 6 and a target launch in 2031.

Prizes followed. Beyond the 2023 European Inventor Award, Togher was a runner-up in the Women Innovators category of the 2025 European Prize for Women Innovators, which carried €70,000 or €50,000 for the two runners-up, according to Engineers Ireland; which of the two amounts she received is not stated. Silicon Republic also reports that she was honoured at the 2025 prize.

No private funding round has been announced since 2019. The company's named investors remain SOSV and Enterprise Ireland, as listed by the Irish Times in 2019 and on the company's 2019 announcement. Togher's profile on the About page says she "secured €10m in funding" without a breakdown.

MUSE: The 2025 EIC Accelerator Award

The Commission's list of companies selected at the 12 March 2025 cut-off names Restored Hearing Limited, with the website lios-group.com, for MUSE, "Materials for the Ultimate Sound reduction in the Environment", with blended finance, a grant plus an equity investment. The EIC announced 40 selected companies on 30 June 2025 and said equity investments would follow "based on each company's individual development and funding strategy". Enterprise Ireland and ThinkBusiness reported "up to €18.75m" for Lios and CroíValve together, without a split.

The grant part is public: CORDIS shows €2,499,999 for a project signed on 7 October 2025, running from 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2027, as does the EIC's project page. The equity part is not. Restored Hearing and Lios do not appear on any of the 16 pages of the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked on 14 October 2026, so no EIC equity investment can be confirmed.

MUSE promises two things: pilot production that will "launch the first products on the market containing SoundBounce", and "a world-first product design simulation tool". The project is in its twelfth month, so neither can be judged yet. The July 2026 announcement of pilot products due in the fourth quarter is the first checkable step.

Why Europe Should Care

Noise is a recognised EU health problem. More than one in five Europeans are exposed to harmful levels of transport noise, which the European Environment Agency links to tens of thousands of premature deaths a year, and the EU is unlikely to meet its zero pollution target of cutting the number of people chronically disturbed by transport noise by 30% by 2030 compared with 2017, according to the EEA's Environmental noise in Europe 2025 report. A thinner, lighter absorber for low frequencies would help vehicle and building makers, and lighter fairing protection matters to Europe's own launchers, the goal of the ESA programme that Lios works in.

The Verdict

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