Provizio: EIC Accelerator Grant for 4D Radar, and What Came Next

Provizio Limited, registered in August 2019 by radar entrepreneur Barry Lunn, set out to stop car crashes before they happen. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's March 2020 cut-off it won a grant for P-APT, the "Provizio Accident Prevention Technology Platform", a mix of its own radar sensors and machine learning meant to "see further, wider and through obstacles". The EU paid €2,499,962.50 towards a total cost of €3,571,375 for a project that ran from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2022, according to CORDIS. The Commission's list of March and May 2020 winners names Provizio Limited of Limerick, grant only, with no other company listed on the project.

Six years later the company is still filing returns and still showing radar at trade fairs. Its radar now ships as a software and antenna design for a Texas Instruments chip, and in contract-built test units. A series production contract with a carmaker, the step that would put its sensors into everyday vehicles, has not been announced.

Where Provizio Stands Now

Provizio is active. The Companies Registration Office's open company data lists it with status "Normal", an annual return made up to 31 July 2026 and accounts to 31 December 2025, and Solocheck records that return as received on 25 September 2026. Solocheck counts 16 shareholders, the largest a company called Nouvation Limited, and classes Provizio as a micro company. The CRO's financial statements data lists filed accounts for the years to December 2022 and December 2024; the figures themselves are in paid documents and could not be checked for this article. OpenCorporates lists a return of allotments, the form filed when new shares are issued, on 24 July 2025; how much money, if any, came with it is not public.

In December 2025 the company announced that it would show software-defined radar with AI perception at CES 2026, hosted in Texas Instruments' meeting rooms. Its website now calls Provizio "the application layer for Software Defined Radar", with markets ranging from cars and robotaxis to mining, agriculture, smart cities and drone detection.

The Technology: More Radar Out of One Chip

Most cars today use cameras plus a few low-resolution radars, and premium self-driving systems add lidar, which is expensive. Imaging radar, often called 4D radar because it measures distance, direction, height and speed, promises much of lidar's picture in all weather and at a fraction of the cost. The catch is that sharper radar images normally need more transmitter and receiver chips, which raises the price.

Provizio's answer is MIMSO, a "software defined active antenna technique" that switches transmitters at high speed on the antenna layer and so extends a single Texas Instruments AWR2944 radar chip to "48 virtual receiver channels" with an angular resolution "of sub 0.5 degrees", according to the product's listing on TI's website. At CES 2025 the company claimed this gives "20x higher resolution" than conventional single-chip solutions, according to EE Journal. On top sits 5D Perception, Provizio's machine-learning layer that classifies and tracks objects on a GPU inside the sensor. Lunn told eeNews Europe in January 2024 that this gives carmakers "L3+ without LiDaR", and that the price would drop below $100 in million-unit quantities. None of these performance figures has been tested independently in public.

What P-APT Promised, and What the Record Shows

The project's final report on CORDIS sets out three objectives: develop the platform and test it on the road; build "Research Instrument Units" to support pilots and de-risk market entry; and make the platform "scalable and licensable" for mass deployment. It says "all objectives have been achieved and surpassed". The report lists radar hardware combined with camera and lidar, live streaming of radar data into machine learning on a GPU, an API for customers, a phone app to warn drivers, patents pending, and road tests on carmaker-supplied vehicles at Future Mobility Campus Ireland. It also says the sensors had "led to series production discussions with multiple potential partners".

1. Develop the platform and test it on the roadDeliveredRoad tests on carmaker test vehicles at Future Mobility Campus Ireland, per the CORDIS report; a radar-equipped Land Rover shown at CES 2023.
2. Research units for pilot customersDeliveredA Voi e-scooter pilot in 2022 and VizioR&I units built by contract manufacturer Mergon from 2024.
3. A licensable, scalable platformPartlyMIMSO listed as a third-party tool on TI's site; no licensee named.
4. Mass deployment in vehiclesNot achievedProvizio said in January 2023 it planned mass production availability by 2025; no carmaker or Tier 1 production contract has been announced.

The project ran to its planned end date. What it delivered is a working sensor platform, and the company has kept developing it since. The aim of the grant, an accident prevention platform ready for mass deployment, is still unmet four years after the project closed. No public release of the phone app described in the report could be found.

What Provizio Has Achieved Since the Award

When it unveiled its 5D Perception system on a Land Rover at CES 2023, Provizio said it planned mass production availability by 2025, according to its announcement. No such production start has been announced.

The money came first. In November 2020 Provizio announced a $6.2 million seed round, which Silicon Republic put at €5.2 million, with backing from Autonomous Stuff founder Bobby Hambrick, the founders of chip company Movidius, ACT Venture Capital and the European Innovation Council, according to The Irish Times and TechCrunch. P-APT was a grant-only award, and Provizio does not appear in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies (all 17 pages, 326 entries, checked for this article), so the EIC's part was the grant rather than equity. None of the reports says how much of the $6.2 million was the EU grant. In October 2022 The Currency reported that Provizio was extending the seed round and was no longer pre-revenue; no amount was given, and no later round has been announced by the company.

The product announcements followed one another. Provizio agreed a pilot with Swedish e-scooter operator Voi in October 2022. In October 2023 it started a pilot with certification company exida aimed at ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 certification for its machine-learning safety technology, according to its announcement; no certificate has been announced since. In January 2024 it launched VizioPrime 6K, a forward radar it said senses up to 600 metres and calls "the first market-ready solution to outperform LiDAR for L3+ applications", and it told eeNews Europe it had projects with "over 10 OEMs" and targeted revenue from industrial applications in the second quarter of 2024. In April 2024 Mergon, an Irish automotive supplier with plants in five countries, agreed to design and manufacture its VizioR&I production units, according to eeNews Europe and ThinkBusiness. At CES 2025 it showed the MIMSO reference board with Texas Instruments.

The record has gaps. None of the more than ten carmaker projects has been named. Whether the 2024 revenue target was met cannot be checked, because the filed accounts are not free and Provizio publishes no figures. The company also lists two projects with the European Space Agency's NAVISP navigation programme, on radar-based location mapping and free-space mapping; ESA does not publish their amounts on that page. CORDIS lists no other EU project for the company.

The Founder's Track Record

Lunn came to Provizio from Arralis, a Limerick radar chip company he led. The sources describe its 2017 deal differently: The Irish Times headlined it as "Arralis gets €50m from Hong Kong-based consortium", while The Irish Times' 2020 Provizio story, The Currency and ThinkBusiness describe Arralis as sold for about $50 million. Provizio's 2022 KPMG Global Tech Innovator award in Ireland is reported both in the CORDIS report and by The Currency.

Why Europe Should Care

Road safety is written into EU law. Since 6 July 2022 the EU's revised General Safety Regulation has required new vehicles to carry advanced driver assistance systems, including automated emergency braking and lane keeping, measures the Commission expects to save over 25,000 lives and avoid at least 140,000 serious injuries by 2038, according to the EU's Urban Mobility Observatory and the parts suppliers' association CLEPA, which lists further stages in 2024, 2026 and 2029. Every one of those systems needs sensors. A European supplier of cheaper, sharper radar fits that demand. Provizio's own design, however, runs on an American chip from Texas Instruments and an Nvidia processor, so it adds European software and antenna know-how to a supply chain that remains largely American.

The Verdict

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