The EIC Accelerator Backed Nomoko's 3D City Twins: Did It Work

Nomoko AG, a Zurich start-up founded in 2015, set out to build what it called "a digital copy of the Earth": centimetre-accurate 3D models of whole cities, captured from drones carrying a camera of its own design and processed by its own software. The European Commission picked it in the 3 April 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 pilot of what is now the EIC Accelerator, and its list of selected companies names Nomoko AG of Zurich as the only beneficiary of the project. The grant was worth €2,379,724.38 towards a total cost of €3,399,606.25, for a project that ran from 1 August 2019 to 31 January 2021, according to CORDIS.

Less than three years after the project ended, on 5 December 2023, the bankruptcy court of the Zurich district court opened bankruptcy proceedings against Nomoko, according to the company's entry in the Swiss commercial register. Netzwoche reported in January 2024 that the company had made no announcement and that its website was no longer reachable. On 17 January 2025 the court suspended the proceedings for lack of assets. The company remains insolvent and in liquidation on the register; it has not yet been struck off.

Where Nomoko Stands Now

The register tells the story in a few lines. On 6 December 2023 the Zurich commercial register entered the new name "Nomoko AG in Liquidation" after the bankruptcy court opened proceedings "with effect from 5 December 2023, 09:00", which dissolved the company. One board member left in January 2024. The January 2025 entry records that the bankruptcy proceedings were "suspended for lack of assets", meaning there was not enough left in the company to pay for a bankruptcy administration, according to the cantonal register excerpt and the publications listed on Zefix. How much creditors lost is not public.

A second company, Nomoko Research GmbH, formerly Bellabocca GmbH, in which Nilson Kufus held 21 shares and acted as managing director, was dissolved by its partners on 3 November 2021. In May 2025 a Zurich court ordered it to be liquidated under bankruptcy rules, and on 14 July 2025 bankruptcy was opened and immediately suspended for lack of assets, according to its register excerpt.

The domain nomoko.world, which CORDIS lists as the project website through an archived copy from December 2020, now carries an unrelated page called "The Tech Ledger" about virtual property, with a link to an essay-writing service in its footer. No statement from Nomoko or its founders about the bankruptcy could be found.

The Technology: A Gigapixel Camera Over Every City

Nomoko's method was photogrammetry at very high resolution. A drone flying at about 150 metres carried a camera the company built itself; software then stitched the images into geo-referenced, textured 3D meshes and point clouds with up to 30,000 points per square metre and centimetre accuracy on the ground, the head of its product lab told Geo Week News in August 2018. The company estimated that ten flying systems could capture a city the size of Zurich, 87 square kilometres, in roughly a day plus processing time. Sources disagree on the camera: Geo Week News gives 1,000 megapixels, Jon Peddie Research 1,500 megapixels, and Nomoko's own Phase 1 summary on CORDIS "1 Giga pixel".

The established alternatives were aerial survey flights from manned aircraft, mobile mapping cars and the 3D layers of large map providers. Nomoko's pitch was speed and accuracy at lower cost, and a business model on top of the data: a "Platform as a Service" where other companies would add their own data layers and build applications on Nomoko's models, with Nomoko taking a share of their revenue, as the project objective describes it. The company called this layer the "Mirrorworld".

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

Nomoko came to Phase 2 through the usual route of the time. A Phase 1 feasibility study, also called "A Digital Copy of the Earth", received €50,000 for May to October 2018 and promised field trials and a go-to-market strategy, according to CORDIS. Its summary projected "€ 45.5 million accumulate revenues". The Phase 2 objective went further: it projected "net sales reaching 118 MM €" and gross income "over 95MM € by 2025", and named autonomous cars, gaming, construction and architecture, and smart cities as target markets.

The project's final periodic report sets out five work streams: faster and better capture of "mirrorcities", improvements to the 3D reconstruction pipeline, growing an ecosystem around the data, designing and launching a first application called Praedia, and integrating the first third-party data layers. It reports one new technical project on the capture system and six on the reconstruction infrastructure, machine learning to automate the segmentation of objects in the models, a beta tester programme for Praedia called "Real Estate Shapers", more than 20 non-disclosure agreements with potential partners, two signed contracts with data providers, and integration of the data into the Cesium 3D engine for display on the web. The report gives no revenue, customer count or sales figure, and the project ended on its planned date.

1. Faster, more accurate city capture and 3D reconstructionDeliveredSeven technical projects reported; CORDIS report (company-reported).
2. Launch a first spatial applicationDeliveredPraedia launched in Switzerland, Silicon Luxembourg, December 2021.
3. Ecosystem of data providers and developersPartialTwo data contracts at project end; 30+ partners claimed in late 2021.
4. €118M net sales by 2025Not achievedBankrupt December 2023; no revenue ever published.

After the Grant: Real Estate, Luxembourg and a Licence to Fly

By the end of the project, Nomoko had narrowed its broad Mirrorworld ambition to real estate. Praedia was described as a free search engine that combined spatial, legal and market data into searchable property maps, with a marketplace for other proptech services on top; it launched in Switzerland, with Luxembourg named as the next market, according to Silicon Luxembourg. A later profile in December 2021 called Praedia a beta and said Nomoko worked with more than 30 partners, many of them supplying data on CO2 emissions or solar potential. No paying customer of Praedia was ever named publicly.

The drone side made regulatory progress. In September 2021 Nomoko received its first authorisation under the EU's Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) from the Luxembourg Directorate of Civil Aviation, which allowed it to fly complex drone operations under EU rules, according to the Greater Zurich Area investment agency; Silicon Luxembourg also reported the approval in December 2021. The company had roots in Luxembourg, where it took part in the Fit 4 Start accelerator in 2016.

In July 2023, five months before the bankruptcy, the company told Silicon Luxembourg that it had 30 full-time staff, had covered all Swiss cities in 3D, counted Deutsche Bahn, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology and Vianden Castle among its clients, and planned to launch a library of algorithms in September 2023. The Deutsche Bahn engagement could not be confirmed from any second source. In September 2023 Nomoko was a finalist in the "Next Global Hot Thing" category of the Digital Economy Awards, Netzwoche reported. Earlier recognition included the CHF 50,000 Prix Strategis in May 2019, according to Startupticker.

The Money

Nomoko never announced a priced venture round. In July 2023 it said it had raised CHF 15 million from business angels and family offices and was targeting a CHF 20 million round with venture capital investors by early 2024, according to Silicon Luxembourg. The CHF 15 million figure could not be confirmed from a second source. What the commercial register does show is how much debt was turned into equity: claims of CHF 539,132.14 in December 2016, CHF 1,439,322.57 in October 2018 and CHF 8,567,498.18 in January 2022 were set off against new shares; the 2018 and 2022 conversions created preferred shares with priority on liquidation proceeds. That is CHF 10.55 million in total. The register does not name the creditors whose claims were converted. A further small capital increase followed in July 2022, the last one on the register. Nomoko's accounts are not public in Switzerland, so its revenue, losses and cash could not be checked.

Nomoko is not among the companies in the EIC Fund portfolio; all 16 pages of the official list were searched. Its 2019 award was grant only, so no EU equity was involved.

Why Europe Should Care

Accurate 3D models of the built environment sit at the centre of two EU policy lines. The Commission's Destination Earth initiative is building a digital model of the Earth for climate and policy work, with its first release operational since June 2024, and the Digital Europe Programme funds a Local Digital Twin toolbox to help cities model themselves. Both depend on spatial data that European cities and companies control. Nomoko offered a privately owned version of exactly that, built in Switzerland. Its failure leaves the open question of who owns the Swiss and Luxembourg city models it captured; no buyer of its data or software has been reported.

The Verdict

Nomoko's former management and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.