EIC Transition Project

Spectrum

Specification-driven high-assurance software development for the AI era.

Funded by an EIC Transition Grant, pereq is now building a specification-driven software development tool suite that dovetails with AI coding agents to help developers establish security and correctness guarantees from design to deployment. Spectrum builds upon our decades of research and experience in software and security verification, and judiciously uses AI agents to scale up these proven techniques so that they can be applied to real-world software.

Perspec is the first tool being developed in Spectrum.

Spectrum was awarded to Cryspen, which now operates under the pereq brand. The objectives below are quoted from the project summary published on CORDIS.

Objectives

Modern software systems continue to suffer from costly and dangerous security vulnerabilities, while the current best practices, based on testing, audits, and frequent security updates, remain fragmented, reactive, and ineffective in finding and fixing subtle security bugs. Formal verification has emerged as a powerful research-driven technique that can provide stronger guarantees but is still too expensive for use in most software projects. Spectrum seeks to break through this impasse by creating the first Integrated Development and Verification Environment (IDVE) that unifies software verification tools, deep security analysis, and specification-based testing within standard software development workflows, enabling developers to find and fix security-critical bugs early in the software lifecycle.

The core research ideas behind Spectrum were developed in two ERC projects, culminating in the ERC Proof-of-Concept CRYSPEN (101069446), which produced the Hax open-source toolchain for formally verifying Rust software. While Hax proves the feasibility of our approach, using it on industrial software still requires significant manual effort and verification expertise. Spectrum transforms this research methodology into a scalable, developer-friendly product by integrating intelligent, automated tools within a familiar development environment that any team can easily adopt.

In this project, Cryspen will build Spectrum and demonstrate it at existing clients, achieving TRL6. In parallel, Cryspen will execute business activities including structured market analysis, customer validation through pilots and surveys, and the preparation of an investor-ready business plan with clear go-to-market and pricing strategies. Demonstrations with clients that include SMEs, big tech, and government agencies will showcase Spectrum’s commercial potential and support early adoption, positioning Cryspen as a product-led deep-tech company ready to scale Spectrum globally.

Project

Programme
EIC Transition, European Innovation Council
Duration
1 May 2026 – 30 April 2029
Coordinator
Cryspen (now using the pereq brand)
Grant agreement
101286719

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