In the summer of 2019 we were delighted to have convinced the selection panel of the EIC (European I nnovation Council)that emmtrix’s unique optimisation tool emmtrix Parallel Studio with its combination of analysis, visualisation and automation has the potential to simplify the uptake of complex but powerful hardware platforms significantly. A huge success for the small Karlsruhe start-up and for the first time a solid outlook for a 2-year period. We started recruiting new developers straightaway and by the kick-off date on December 1, 2019 we were keen to make use of our new opportunities. The first major milestone was the embedded world tradeshow in March 2022 and conference where we presented emmtrix with our own booth for the first time.

You can probably all remember the spring of 2020 turned out rather differently than expected. Instead of having full tradeshows it was the time when this strange new virus was making people nervous. Despite all the uncertainties we set of for Nuremberg, got our super-elegant booth ready and then found out that more and more of the big exhibitors had cancelled their attendance last-minute. The halls were emptying instead of filling up. And this disappearance of new and existing opportunities was what dominated the next 12 months almost. All our contacts in the automotive or aerospace industry had to stay at home, work short-time and focus on minimising cost and maximising income. Our market had gone into stasis first, then into survival mode and adopting new tools for future challenges had disappeared of the corporate agendas.

2020 was hard: while we were growing our team everyone else was putting up additional fences, so we made no progress with outside partners and could only concentrate on working on our tool and adding new functionality. The EU-support was vital during this long time of waiting for our potential customers to come back. Eventually, at the end of 2020, we finally started our first major cooperation and 2021 and 2022 have brought significant progress for us with our parallelisation tool being complemented by a number of additional solutions all closely related to our core competency of automating processes for better code: performance estimation, dependency analysis, vectorisation, C++2C compiler.

With an extra 12 months added to the project we could make up for most of the time lost to the pandemic and conclude the project with a positive outlook and the first commercial successes and partnerships. We could finally have a near-normal embedded world 2022, it was summer not end of winter and the automotive visitors still were not back, but our concepts from 25 months earlier worked out well and our new products proved popular.

With hindsight we realise that we underestimated the time it takes to take products from a proof of concept stage to the market and we are much more focused on this intricate process than 3 years ago. A difficult lesson to learn, but an invaluable step forward.

We are extremely grateful for the support we have received via the EIC programme, we have had a very good exchange with our project officers, our coaches and we have taken part in some of the additional programmes open to companies that are supported by the EU, from networking across Europe, seeking investment up to addressing the issue of carbon reduction. We are very happy to recommend the EIC programme for any company that is in advanced technological areas and needs help in their market-entry phase.