Unblur Got EIC Accelerator Money for Fire AI, Then Won UK Brigades

Unblur, a software company from the Barcelona area, told the European Commission in 2020 that artificial intelligence could help commanders at wildfires and floods make faster decisions, and that quicker deployment of crews "would reduce the number of uncontrolled wildfires by 9%". The European Innovation Council selected its project, IRIS, in the May 2020 Green Deal round of the EIC Accelerator pilot with blended finance, and the EU contributed €2,425,500 towards a total cost of €3,465,000, according to CORDIS. The Commission's list of selected companies names Unblur, of Sant Cugat del Vallès, as the only beneficiary of IRIS.

What Unblur sells today is incident command software: a shared, live picture of an emergency for the officers running it. Its customers are mainly British fire and rescue services. In March 2026 NEC Software Solutions announced a partnership to link Unblur's IRIS platform with NEC's Vision 5 command and control system for UK emergency services. Unblur's UK contracts published on Contracts Finder add up to £466,500. The wildfire use case that framed the EU application has no public deployment.

Where Unblur Stands Now

Unblur SL is active in the Spanish company register, has filed accounts up to the 2024 financial year and last changed its share capital in March 2024, according to Empresia, which reproduces the official gazette BORME. eInforma and DatosCif give the same incorporation date, 3 October 2016, and the same registered office on Avinguda Francesc Cambó in Barcelona. Its UK subsidiary, Unblur Ltd, is active at Companies House and filed accounts for the year to 31 May 2026 in September 2026.

The most recent commercial news is the NEC tie-up. NEC's Steve Ainsworth said that integrating IRIS within Vision 5 "creates a powerful, unified ecosystem", and Zamarro said NEC "shares our ambition to help emergency services operate with clearer intelligence and better tools". The announcement names no shared customer and no figures. Unblur's own website says it operates in the UK and Spain and is "expanding to other countries in Europe and the Middle East"; its latest blog post dates from July 2025.

The Technology: One Screen for the Incident Ground

Unblur's IRIS Core is a browser application that gathers what is known about an incident in one place, and IRIS Tactics is an Android app that turns a phone or tablet into a GPS tracker, a body-worn streaming camera and a mapping tool, Unblur's account executive Steve McLinden, who led Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service's Transformation2020 project, told Critical Communications Today in August 2022. "IRIS is essentially an information bucket," he said. The platform includes a dashboard for the UK's Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme (JESIP) and forms for analytical risk assessment, which McLinden tied to the lesson from the Grenfell Tower fire that risk information must be shared in real time, "rather than just handing a clipboard to someone". At Humberside, IRIS Core on tablets replaced the traditional command support wallet.

The AI that the EU application stressed is a narrower part of the product. A research centre in Barcelona, the i2CAT Foundation, built the AI module: it suggests resources for an incident from historical call-out data and explains its suggestions, leaving "the final decision to the user", according to CIO España in July 2023. Unblur's final report on CORDIS says i2CAT delivered "two different prediction models with a fair degree of accuracy" and adds voice-to-text decision logging. Its newer add-ons, grouped as Unblur Nexus, include an AI summariser, hazardous plume prediction from weather data and radio integration.

What IRIS Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

CORDIS lists the grant agreement as signed on 24 November 2020, with the project running from 1 December 2020 to 30 June 2023 under the Green Deal topic of the EIC Accelerator pilot. The objective promised a tool "co-designed and tested by 10 Emergency Services in Europe" and named Airbus among interested industry players. The final report says Unblur built and kept extending IRIS 1.0, rebuilt the Tactics app, and delivered the system design and the AI models.

The field trials fell well short of plan. "In our initial proposal, we had estimated 25 pilot sites for comprehensive field trials," the report says; by the end of the project Unblur had run in-depth trials at 6, which it describes as a deliberate focus on demanding sites likely to buy, naming London Fire Brigade, West Midlands Fire Service and the Fire Service College. All three are in the UK, outside the EU since 2020. The report also records monthly updates to "EIC Fund representatives" from June 2021 and the preparation of due diligence documents, but not whether the fund invested.

1. IRIS 1.0 complete solutionDeliveredIRIS Core and Tactics in paid use at Humberside and West Midlands.
2. AI prediction modelsDeliveredTwo models built with i2CAT, per CORDIS and CIO España.
3. 25 pilot sitesMissed6 sites trialled by June 2023.
4. Tested by 10 European emergency servicesPartialUK services named; no EU public emergency service customer confirmed by a third party.
5. Faster wildfire response, 9% fewer uncontrolled firesNot shownNo wildfire deployment or measured result announced.

What Unblur Has Achieved Since the Award

The clearest record of Unblur's sales is the UK government's Contracts Finder. Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service awarded it a £38,000 contract for command software in December 2019, before the EIC award. West Midlands Fire Service, which Unblur's website calls the second largest in the UK, started a £40,000 proof of concept in October 2022, reported at the time by UKAuthority, followed by a £168,500 extension through the G-Cloud 13 framework in September 2023 and a £75,000 subscription from May 2024 to May 2026. The service announced in November 2023 that it would take the system to Birmingham's fire stations after the first trial, which the International Fire & Safety Journal also reported.

Humberside Fire and Rescue Service awarded Unblur Ltd a £145,000 contract in October 2024 for implementation and three years of support, running to January 2028. By July 2025 IRIS Core and Tactics were in use across all its appliances and command vehicles, replacing the traditional command support wallet, according to UKAuthority and Emergency Services Times.

Other customer claims rest on fewer sources. Critical Communications Today reported in 2022 that London Fire Brigade had "recently signed a commercial agreement" for IRIS Core "for 10 years" and that the Fire Service College had built it into its incident command course; a Contracts Finder search for Unblur returns no London Fire Brigade notice, and no value has been published. Unblur's July 2025 blog post places IRIS at the centre of the college's new Immersive Skills Lab. The company's website also lists Renfe, the Port of Huelva and Saudi Sicli as clients; no contract or third-party report confirming these could be found.

The Money

Unblur's finances are only partly visible. Empresia states that the company's annual turnover is below €500,000; Infoempresa puts it at less than €2 million with 10 to 49 employees, while eInforma reports 8 employees. Neither register summary gives the result or equity. The share capital rose several times after the award: in May 2021 (together with two reductions in May and August 2021), in May 2022, in September 2022 and in March 2024, when it reached €4,596.98. These entries show new shares being issued but not the price paid for them.

Who paid is not fully clear either. CB Insights lists Castiventures, Airbus BizLab and FIDES Capital as investors. VCBacked lists Castiventures, "Public" and the European Innovation Council, with $778K of total funding and a last round in March 2022. Unblur does not appear in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which this review checked across all 16 pages and 319 entries. Whether the equity part of the blended award was ever paid in could not be verified.

The UK subsidiary is small. Unblur Ltd's filed micro-entity accounts show net liabilities of £21,908 in May 2023, £35,291 in 2024, £40,721 in 2025 and £6,225 in May 2026, with one employee or none, and Unblur SL has held 75% or more of its shares since August 2022, according to its register of persons with significant control.

Why Europe Should Care

Civil protection is rising on the EU agenda. The Commission's Preparedness Union Strategy of March 2025 names "climate change and increasing natural disasters" among the threats Europe faces, sets out 30 key actions and proposes an EU Crisis Hub to join up existing crisis structures. Software that lets fire, police and ambulance commanders share one live picture of an incident fits that aim; NEC and Unblur say their joint system is meant for police, fire, ambulance and multiagency teams.

The irony is geographic. The EU grant was justified by wildfires and floods in Europe, and the CORDIS objective promised co-design with 10 European emergency services, yet every customer that has published a contract with Unblur is British. Its Spanish home market appears on its website through Renfe and the Port of Huelva, but not yet in any public record.

The Verdict

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