RadiSurf Since the EIC Accelerator: Bonding Tech Sold, Lab Closing

RadiSurf set out to make glue unnecessary. The Aarhus company coats metal, glass or carbon with a layer of polymer chains a few nanometres thick, so that a plastic part can be welded straight onto it. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's March 2020 cut-off it won blended finance for RadiBond, a project to take that coating from the lab to industrial production, with an EU grant of €1,478,750 towards a total cost of €2,112,500, according to CORDIS. "We are extremely happy with this grant and investment which will mean a huge difference to our strategy for years to come," chief executive Mikkel Kongsfelt said at the time, according to the consultancy Innovayt, which wrote the application.

The strategy changed within a year. In May 2021 KCK, a family office investment fund, bought RadiSurf and, according to Aarhus University, acquired and invested more than DKK 100 million. After the takeover "the grant and the commitment were withdrawn", the company's 2021 annual report says, and CORDIS records that the project was "terminated on 8 January 2022". RadiSurf repaid part of the grant in January 2023. In July 2026 it reported that its American owner, now the semiconductor equipment maker Yield Engineering Systems, had decided to discontinue it.

A Subsidiary Being Wound Down

RadiSurf's annual report for 2025, filed with the Danish Business Authority on 14 July 2026, says that its parent RadiSurf Inc. merged with Yield Engineering Systems, Inc. (YES) in August 2025, and that "due to changed market expectations" YES "has decided to discontinue the activities of RadiSurf ApS". The company expected to "cease all operations by the end of August 2026", with "a solvent liquidation" planned during 2026. It wrote down assets by DKK 1,985,987, set aside DKK 2,374,872 to restore its leased premises, and booked a DKK 3,450,000 corporate tax claim for earlier years.

The register entries match that timetable. North Data, which mirrors the Danish CVR register, shows Yield Engineering Systems Inc. as shareholder from 27 August 2025, a new managing director from 31 August 2026 and a move of the registered address from Risskov to central Aarhus on 1 September 2026. No liquidation had been registered there by early October 2026. The company's old address, radisurf.com, now forwards to the YES website, which does not mention RadiSurf. This article classes RadiSurf as acquired, by KCK in May 2021; its owner set August 2026 for operations to end, and the legal dissolution is still to come.

The Technology: Welding Plastic Onto Metal

Gluing a plastic to a metal is hard because the two surfaces are chemically different, and most adhesives bond well to only one of them. RadiSurf's approach, developed from research at Aarhus University's chemistry department and nanoscience centre, grows "polymer brushes", polymer chains fixed at one end to the metal surface, directly on the part. When the plastic is melted against the coated part by ultrasonic, laser or hot-plate welding, the chains mix into it and entangle, which the company compared to a nano-scale Velcro. The bond can be undone by remelting, which the company presented as a way to separate parts for recycling, according to its 2020 Create the Future contest entry.

The science is published. A June 2020 paper in Polymers by Aarhus University researchers and RadiSurf's Mie Lillethorup reports polymerisation times cut to 5 to 10 minutes and tensile strengths of about 11 to 35 MPa across metal and polymer pairs. In a 2020 interview with CHEManager, Kongsfelt said that with PEEK plastic on steel "it is the plastic that breaks, not the bond", and the magazine reported that RadiSurf was working with customers in 12 countries. Those performance claims come from the company and its co-founders; no independent test was found.

What RadiBond Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The European Commission's list of the March and May 2020 EIC Accelerator pilot winners names RadiSurf alone for RadiBond, with blended finance; no partner company is listed. The grant agreement was signed on 9 September 2020 and the project was to run from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2022. Its objectives were to scale production of the coating chemicals to industrial levels, introduce coating systems for high-volume production and qualify RadiBond in pilot customers' products, ahead of what the objective called a "full-scale market launch". It was RadiSurf's second EU grant, after a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility study, AdheSurf, in 2017 and 2018.

The final report on CORDIS does not match the termination date. It is labelled as covering October 2021 to September 2022 and speaks of "the closure of the project", yet CORDIS says the project was terminated in January 2022, and the report still describes an order for large coating tools from a US manufacturer as "expected to be placed in Q2, 2022". It says the reuse time of the coating baths was improved more than sixfold, coating chemicals were produced in industrial batches in less than a shift, and a manual line was coating about 400 large sheets a week for one client. It also says RadiSurf worked with around 30 clients, and that at closure one had a product on the market and two had products in beta test. A later sentence of the same report counts three clients on the market. None of these clients is named, and no product using RadiBond has been announced by a customer.

1. Industrial production of coating chemicalsCompany-reportedIndustrial batches and automated mixers, per the CORDIS report only.
2. High-volume coating systemsNot deliveredLarge tools only designed; the order was still "expected" and no installation was announced.
3. Products qualified with pilot customersPartlyOne to three unnamed clients on the market, per the report; no customer has confirmed it.
4. Full-scale market launch of RadiBondNot deliveredProject terminated in January 2022; customer pipeline written off in 2022.
5. EIC equity investmentWithdrawnCommitment withdrawn after the takeover; RadiSurf is not in the EIC Fund portfolio.

The EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all its pages for this article, does not include RadiSurf, which agrees with the annual report: the equity part of the blended finance was never invested. How much of the grant was paid out and how much was returned is not public. The 2022 annual report says only that the repayment "has been finally agreed with EIC and was paid in January 2023" and matched the provision made a year earlier.

From Product Company to In-House Lab

KCK already owned Yield Engineering Systems, a Californian maker of process equipment for chip packaging, according to a deal listing by OEM Capital that records its purchase by KCK-MTM Technologies. In July 2021 Lillethorup appeared with a YES executive on the 3D InCites podcast, which described the two as companies "under the KCK Group umbrella" working on polymer brush coatings for wafer bonding in 2.5D and 3D chip packaging, MEMS, sensors and microLEDs. That is a long way from the cars, planes and dishwashers named in the RadiBond objective.

The annual reports show the turn. The 2021 report already speaks of "focusing on a smaller product range" after the takeover. In June 2022 it was taken over by RadiSurf Inc., and its 2022 report says the earlier "focus on a large pipeline of projects and customers" was replaced by development "in tight collaboration with RadiSurf Inc.". It wrote off "a significant number of projects", an extra cost of DKK 5.0 million, and lost DKK 14.2 million that year. In 2023 it sold all its intangible assets to the parent for DKK 8.5 million and became, in its own words, "a focused R&D company" working on a cost-plus agreement, according to the 2023 report. In 2024 it bought the founding patent from Aarhus University for DKK 4.0 million and passed it straight to RadiSurf Inc., "as it is their policy to hold all patents", the 2024 report says.

RadiSurf ApS does not disclose its revenue. Under the cost-plus deal it reported gross profit of DKK 19.8 million in 2023, including the asset sale, and DKK 16.2 million in 2024, with net profits of DKK 5.6 million and DKK 1.3 million. In 2025 gross profit fell to DKK 13.1 million and the company lost DKK 8.0 million, which it put down primarily to foreign exchange losses as the US dollar fell from 7.20 to 6.36 krone; the year also carried the write-down of assets for the closure.

The Money

KCK's money is visible in the balance sheet. Equity went from DKK 0.18 million at the end of 2020 to DKK 21.2 million a year later, after KCK raised the share capital and converted loans, the 2021 report says; it then injected DKK 6.8 million of equity and lent DKK 6.8 million in May 2022. Once the Danish company was a contract lab, money flowed back: the accounts provide for dividends of DKK 7.0 million for 2023 and DKK 7.14 million for 2024. Together with the 2025 loss, they cut equity from DKK 24.1 million at the end of 2023 to DKK 3.2 million at the end of 2025, according to the filings on virk.dk.

Why Europe Should Care

RadiBond fitted two EU priorities. The Commission's Circular Economy Action Plan of 11 March 2020, nine days before RadiSurf's cut-off, called for products that are more durable, reusable and repairable and for a review of end-of-life vehicle rules that links waste with design, according to K&L Gates. A joint that holds like a weld but can be remelted apart speaks directly to that. Its later use in chip packaging falls under the European Chips Act, in force since 21 September 2023, which aims to strengthen Europe's semiconductor supply chain.

The record shows the limits of the EIC's leverage. The grant was meant to build a European manufacturer of bonding chemicals. Instead the know-how, the patents and the team's output moved to a US owner, and the Danish company that held the EU award is being closed. The EIC did withdraw its money once the company changed hands, and part of the grant came back.

The Verdict

RadiSurf, KCK and Yield Engineering Systems have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.