Oculavis: 7 Years After Its EIC Accelerator Remote Service Grant

In 2019 the Aachen software company oculavis told the European Commission that 20 million European service technicians travel to their customers every day, and that its app could cut that travel, and the machine downtime that comes with it, by up to 50%. The app, oculavis SHARE, connected a technician at a broken machine with an expert at the manufacturer by live video, augmented reality markings and chat. The EU backed the plan with a grant of €2,499,218.75 under the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the forerunner of the EIC Accelerator, according to CORDIS. Seven years later the company still exists, still has its three founders in charge, and has never taken outside equity. But it no longer goes by oculavis. In June 2025 it relaunched as Maintastic, a maintenance management system in which remote video support is one feature among many, according to its own rename announcement.

From Remote Support App to Maintenance System

The register shows the company alive and filing. North Data lists annual reports for every year from 2017 to 2024, the latest published on 17 February 2026, and records the name Maintastic GmbH from June 2025 at the same address and register number, according to North Data. No insolvency appears. The figures in those accounts sit behind North Data's paywall and could not be checked for this article.

The company describes the rename as more than a new label. Its about page calls Maintastic a "strategische Neuausrichtung", a strategic realignment, towards an AI-assisted computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) for machines and plants. The June 2025 announcement lists asset management, fault tickets, work order planning, digital checklists, an AI agent that turns spoken reports into tickets, and "live collaboration with augmented reality". In an anniversary post on 17 August 2026, co-founder Martin Plutz wrote that management features for tickets, assets and workflows kept being added until the remote support product "mündete", flowed into, a maintenance management product.

For this series that counts as a pivot: the funded technology survives inside the product, but the lead product is now a maintenance system sold to the plant operators that maintain machines, not a remote service app sold to the manufacturers that build them. The CMMS market is crowded with established vendors, and Maintastic now competes there rather than in the narrower AR remote support niche it was funded to scale.

The Technology: An Expert at the Machine Without the Trip

The CORDIS summary describes oculavis SHARE as a software-as-a-service platform that machine builders could brand as their own app and hand to customers. A technician on the shop floor opens the app on a smartphone, tablet or smart glasses and calls the manufacturer's expert, who sees the live video and can draw augmented reality markers into it. The same app carried step-by-step AR instructions, machine documentation, spare part orders, service tickets and machine data. The established alternative was a service engineer on a plane, or a phone call, email thread and VPN session, which the project's own final report describes as the industry norm "even in 2022".

In November 2019 EIT Digital, an EU-funded innovation network, gave oculavis first place in the Digital Industry category of its EIT Digital Challenge for a "Remote Service Platform with customizable service apps, AR and AI applications", according to EIT Digital and Tech.eu. Silicon Canals reported at the time that the company competed against 279 scale-ups from 33 countries. One feature from that era still sets the product apart: Maintastic can be installed on a customer's own servers as well as run in the cloud, which the independent directory European Purpose says makes it the only vendor on its list to offer both.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

oculavis applied as a profitable, bootstrapped company. Its CORDIS summary gives 25 employees, more than 100 paid proof-of-concept installations and a turnover of €1.45 million in 2018, a figure that could not be checked against a second source. In December 2019 Silicon Canals reported over 30 staff, about 130 clients, mostly machine builders, 90% of business in Germany, and no external equity. The European Commission's list of the April 2019 winners names OCULAVIS GMBH as the only beneficiary of the project.

The project ran from 1 August 2019 to 31 January 2022. Its stated aim was to make SHARE ready for "10,000+ installations" worldwide through four parts: new core software modules, a fully automatic SaaS deployment system, a customer online information system and scalable internal business processes. The final report says all seven milestones were reached and that, "with the exception of one deliverable and one milestone", everything was submitted on time. It also shows that some of the scale-up machinery stopped at the proof-of-concept stage.

1. Seven core software modulesDeliveredDocumentation, spare parts ordering, AR x-ray view, AR instructions, analytics, event monitoring and administration further developed, per the final report.
2. Customer online information systemDeliveredListed as a demonstrator deliverable on CORDIS, with contract, security and GDPR templates.
3. Fully automatic SaaS deploymentPartlyAutomated deployment and online payment reached proof of concept only; a free trial and single sign-on were built. Maintastic now offers a 14-day trial and a cloud workspace.
4. Partner ecosystem with SAP and SalesforceUnverifiedThe report names "technical strategic alliances" with both; no announcement by SAP or Salesforce was found.
5. International salesPartlyA Chicago office was set up and a Chinese joint venture prepared; by 2026 the company lists one site, Aachen.
6. 10,000+ installationsNot achievedThe company reports 100 to 150 customers in 2025 and 2026; no installation count near 10,000 has been published.

Customers and installations are not the same measure, since one customer can roll out many apps, and the company has never published an installation count after the project. Measured against its own customer figures, though, the base of about 130 clients reported in 2019 has not multiplied.

What Happened After the Grant

The international push the grant paid for did not last in its original form. The project report records the set-up of a sales office in Chicago and preparation of a technical joint venture in China, and a vendor profile on SoftwareOne says the company had offices in Chicago and Shanghai by 2022. Maintastic's about page now gives "1 Standort in Aachen", one location. When or why the foreign offices closed has not been published.

Public research money kept flowing. CORDIS lists oculavis, under its new name, as a partner in five more EU projects after SHARE, from industrial 5G testbeds to extended reality for Industry 5.0 and, from July 2026, generative AI for virtual worlds. North Data also lists German federal grants, among them €628,850 from August 2024 for generative AI in machine maintenance and €566,100 from June 2026 for a micro-LED projector for worker assistance.

The team grew, though the company's own numbers do not line up. The June 2025 announcement says "über 70 Mitarbeitende", over 70 staff, and more than 150 industrial customers. The about page, read in October 2026, says 60+ staff and 120+ customers, and the August 2026 anniversary post says over 60 staff and 100+ customers. Whether the headcount fell between mid-2025 and 2026 or the figures are rounded differently could not be established without the filed accounts.

Why Europe Should Care

The project fits two EU priorities. It promised fewer service flights, which the final report links to CO2 savings of up to 50% in industrial service. And it addresses the shortage of skilled technicians in European manufacturing, the problem Maintastic now leads with. The Commission's Industry 5.0 vision puts "the wellbeing, skills, and empowerment of workers at the centre of production systems", and the company's participation in the EU's XR5.0 project applies its software to exactly that agenda. A founder-owned German maintenance system that customers can run on their own servers also gives plant operators a choice over where their machine data sits; in its GRACE multi-cloud research project the company names lower dependence on single cloud providers as a goal.

The Verdict

Maintastic has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout. Revenue, profit and headcount from the filed accounts could not be verified.