LiquidWeb: EIC Accelerator Grant for a BCI, and What Came Next

People in a complete locked-in state are awake and aware but cannot move a single muscle, not even their eyes, which rules out the eye-tracking systems most communication aids rely on. LiquidWeb, a small software company in Siena, Italy, built BrainControl, a "mental joystick" that reads an EEG headset and recognises when a patient imagines a movement, turning that thought into a click on a tablet. In the European Commission's list of winners of the 9 October 2019 cut-off of the Horizon 2020 EIC Accelerator pilot, LiquidWeb SRL is the only beneficiary named for the BrainControl project, with the funding type "Blended". The grant agreement, signed on 28 April 2020, gave it €747,250 towards a €1,080,000 project, according to CORDIS.

The project ran from May 2020 to October 2022 and produced what it promised on paper: a new version of the communicator, a robot avatar for remote museum visits and a diagnostic platform. On 16 April 2024 the court in Siena declared LiquidWeb, by then trading as "Liquidweb S.r.l. in liquidazione", subject to judicial liquidation (liquidazione giudiziale), Italy's court-run insolvency procedure, according to the creditors' portal Fallco. The company is insolvent.

Where LiquidWeb Stands Now

The Siena procedure, number 16/2024, is run by delegated judge Gianmarco Marinai with Chiara Vanni as trustee. A first creditors' hearing on the list of claims was held on 12 September 2024, and hearings on late claims followed until 15 January 2026, according to the Fallco creditors' portal. The company's own LinkedIn page now reads "Società posta in liquidazione" (company placed in liquidation) and says the page is kept for information and historical purposes only. The register summary on CompanyReports also lists the company as "in liquidazione". When the voluntary liquidation that preceded the court procedure began is not shown in free sources, and the size of the debts admitted to the procedure is not public.

The BrainControl name has not disappeared. The old company domain, liquidweb.it, now forwards to XMetrix, whose site offers "Braincontrol AAC" next to two newer products: 4Habits, a healthy-ageing coaching app, and GestureSpeak, which uses a smartphone camera to read gestures from locked-in patients. XMetrix S.r.l. is a separate legal entity, with VAT number 01587980523 and its seat at Viale Xxiv Maggio 21 in Siena, as the register spells it. CompanyReports gives its founding year as 2023 and reports 2025 revenue of €92,392, a profit of €9,449 and staff costs of €58,079; Aziende.it gives a registration date of 9 September 2024, 2024 revenue of €18,582 and two employees. Who owns XMetrix, and whether it bought the BrainControl software from LiquidWeb or from its trustee, could not be verified. The braincontrol.eu domain, which the CORDIS article still links, shows only a hosting provider's "website under construction" page.

The Technology: Reading Imagined Movement

Most augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) aids for people with ALS or brain injury depend on some remaining movement: a switch, a head mouse or an eye tracker. BrainControl's core is a brain-computer interface (BCI). A wireless, non-invasive EEG headset bought from a third party records brain activity, and LiquidWeb's pattern-recognition software learns to detect when the user imagines moving an object, so that the thought works like a joystick, as the company's developer Tommaso Chiantini described it to Innovation Origins in December 2017. The same questions can be used to check whether a patient is cognitively aware. At that time 14 patients were using the system.

The EIC proposal aimed to turn this into one "horizontal multimodal platform" that a patient could keep using as the disease progresses: EEG for those who can no longer move, plus inertial sensors, cameras and eye trackers for those with residual movement, according to the CORDIS objective. Pasquale Fedele, the founder, presented BrainControl at the University of Pisa as a technology that began as a research project at the University of Siena and is "today a CE class I Medical Device", according to a seminar announcement. Class I is the lowest risk class, and unless a device is sterile, measures something or is a reusable surgical instrument, the manufacturer may carry out the conformity assessment without a notified body, according to Germany's medical devices authority BfArM; no notified body certificate or clinical trial is public.

The only accuracy figures come from the company. In a CORDIS results article, Alessandro Tozzo, a consultant at LiquidWeb and the project coordinator, said an accuracy study on 25 healthy volunteers reached 72% after the first training session and 90% after the fifth. No publication of that study could be found.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

The final periodic report, covering June 2021 to October 2022, lists four results. A new BrainControl BCI communicator, with social networks, messaging, web browsing, e-book access and voice-assistant home control, was released to existing users in September 2021 and to the market in October 2021, and the report says it was "used by few patients". BrainControl Avatar, a robot that a disabled person drives remotely, was "completed, tested, launched and already sold to two customers (2 Museums in Siena)". BrainControl Smart, a platform of cognitive and visual tests for diagnosis and rehabilitation, was released in September 2022. A software interface for steering a wheelchair by thought or gaze was finished and shown to two wheelchair makers, but "the interest is rather limited for the moment".

The avatar is the result with the most independent evidence. Siena's Santa Maria della Scala museum complex presented it as the first museum service of its kind in December 2020, through a partnership between the City of Siena and UBI Banca, according to Finestre sull'Arte, and the museum was still offering free one-hour avatar tours in August 2023, according to a later Finestre sull'Arte report.

1. New BCI communicatorDeliveredReleased October 2021, per the CORDIS report; still listed by XMetrix.
2. Robot avatar controlDeliveredIn use at Santa Maria della Scala from 2020 to at least 2023.
3. Diagnostic platformDeliveredBrainControl Smart released September 2022, per the company's report.
4. Wheelchair controlPartialSoftware finished; no wheelchair maker adopted it.
5. Clinical evidenceUnverifiedNo clinical trial; accuracy study unpublished.
6. Web version by Q3 2023, two patentsNot achievedAnnounced in the final report; neither has been reported since.

The project ended on schedule on 31 October 2022. Along the way, the report says, LiquidWeb reorganised, appointed "a new CEO with solid management and commercial experience (as recommended)", hired two senior consultants for marketing and outsourced some development to two universities. The new chief executive is not named in the report and could not be identified from public sources. Delivery is rated partly delivered here: the three main products shipped, but the wheelchair interface found no buyer, clinical evidence was never published, and the follow-on products promised in the final report never appeared before the company failed.

The Money

Before the EU grant, LiquidWeb raised €2.5 million from RedSeed Ventures in June 2018, whose managing partner Roberto Zanco became chairman, according to BeBeez; CB Insights also lists RedSeed as its investor and $2.94 million raised in total. In 2015 the British incubator Breed Reply had picked BrainControl as one of three start-ups for possible investment; EconomyUp reported at the time that a wire story calling it "the best start-up in the world" was false and that the investment was still under negotiation. Whether Breed Reply's money arrived could not be verified.

The EC winner list gives the BrainControl award as blended finance, meaning a grant plus an equity stake from the EIC. CORDIS shows only the €747,250 grant, and LiquidWeb does not appear among the roughly 320 organisations on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all 16 pages for this article. No source shows that any EIC equity was invested.

The filed accounts show a company that never found a market of paying users. Revenue was €66,900 in 2019, €117,400 in 2020 and €64,597 in 2021, against net losses of €435,000, €379,800 and €317,144, according to ReportAziende, which draws on the business register; the 2021 figures, staff costs of €260,286 and a headcount of two to five are confirmed by CompanyReports. ReportAziende notes that 2021 is the last year for which accounts were filed.

Why It Matters for Europe

The EU counts about 90 million people with disabilities, and its strategy for their rights up to 2030, extended in May 2026, names digital tools and assistive technologies as a route to autonomy and independent living, according to the European Commission. Non-invasive brain-computer interfaces for people who have lost all movement are a small, hard market: users are few, purchases go through health systems and charities, and evidence of benefit is costly to produce. LiquidWeb's record shows the gap between a working product and a business. The EU grant paid for software that worked well enough to be used in a public museum, but revenue never rose above €117,400 a year.

The Verdict

Neither LiquidWeb's trustee, XMetrix nor the EIC was asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.