nyris and the EIC Accelerator: Finding Spare Parts by Photo

When a machine breaks down, finding the right replacement part usually means searching a catalogue by part number or keyword. nyris, a Berlin company registered in 2015, lets the user take a photo of the part instead and matches it against the manufacturer's catalogue. The obstacle, as its EU project set out, is that manufacturers rarely have photos of every part. nyris generates synthetic images from CAD files to fill the gap.

The European Innovation Council granted €2,168,687.50 towards a €3.10 million project, and the EIC Fund later co-led a €10 million round with Trumpf Venture, the investment arm of the machine tool maker, a nyris customer. The company names a string of industrial and retail customers. Its performance claims, including beating Google and Meta at product search, come from its own studies.

Where nyris Stands Today

nyris sells its visual search to machine builders, distributors and retailers. Its 2023 funding announcement, also published by the investor eCAPITAL, names Trumpf, IKEA, Profishop, Hornbach, DMG Mori, Landefeld and Bühler as customers. Its company timeline lists a partnership with the CAD parts platform CADENAS and a place in SAP's partner programme in 2024.

The German register lists the company as active, with a capital increase in August 2025 and €169,744 of Berlin research funding (Pro FIT) in June 2026. We found no funding round announced since 2023.

The Technology: Photos of Parts That Were Never Photographed

Visual search needs reference images of every item in the catalogue. For industrial parts, the CORDIS objective says, manufacturers often cannot afford to photograph them all, but they have CAD models. nyris renders CAD files into realistic images to train and index its search. Its CORDIS report says the pipeline processes "hundreds of CAD files per minute" and that the team applied conditional latent diffusion models, a type of generative AI, to produce the images. The company's timeline states that in 2021 its search on synthetic images exceeded the accuracy of an index built on real photos.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project ran from September 2021 to August 2023, although the grant agreement was only signed in June 2022. The CORDIS report says a study of 55 candidates found visual search "3.3 times faster and 51% more successful" than keyword search, that pilot trials turned into paid licences, and that nyris obtained ISO 27001:2022 certification, filed a patent and registered the trademark "visual synonyms". It gives no customer, licence or revenue numbers. nyris describes the EIC's rating of the project as "excellent".

1. Synthetic images from CAD at scaleDeliveredPipeline processing hundreds of CAD files per minute, per CORDIS.
2. Faster, better part identificationCompany data55-person study reported by nyris; no published method.
3. Paying industrial customersDeliveredPilots converted to licences; named customers include Trumpf and DMG Mori.
4. Independent validationNot shownIts 2026 benchmark is hosted by nyris.

What Has Happened Since the Award

nyris' about page claims that in 2025 it "beats Google, Meta, and Cohere" at visual product search and spare parts identification. The underlying benchmark paper, posted to arXiv in March 2026, evaluates embedding models on industrial datasets from manufacturing, automotive, DIY and retail, with results presented on a nyris-hosted website. arXiv papers are not peer reviewed, and a benchmark presented by one of the competitors should be read accordingly.

The Money

When the EIC selected nyris, the company announced €5 million of EIC support, before final negotiations. CORDIS shows the grant part as €2.17 million. The equity came in the March 2023 round, which Trumpf Venture and the EIC Fund led, with existing investors eCAPITAL, Inter IKEA Group, SEK and Mücke & Roth. The European Investment Bank had become a minority shareholder in 2022, according to nyris.

Why Europe Should Care

Spare parts and service are a core business for Europe's machine builders, and nyris' CEO has pitched visual search as a way to cut machine downtime. A European supplier of the software, part-owned by a European machine builder and the EIB, is what the EIC chose to back twice, with a grant and with equity.

The Verdict

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