8inks and the EIC Accelerator: Curtain-Coated Battery Electrodes

A battery electrode is made by spreading a wet slurry onto metal foil and drying it, and the standard tool for that, the slot-die coater, lays down one layer per pass. 8inks, an ETH Zurich spin-off registered as eightinks AG, pours several layers at once from a falling liquid curtain, a method the paper and photographic film industries have used for decades. The company says on its website that this coats up to ten times faster and cuts capital and operating costs by 30% at production scale, figures it also gave electrive in May 2024.

On 15 June 2026 the European Innovation Council announced 38 companies selected in its latest EIC Accelerator round, and its selection list includes eightinks AG with the project "Enabling the Next Generation of Battery Manufacturing through Multilayer, High-Speed Electrode Coating", recommended for blended finance. The list gives no amount per company and states that selection "does not constitute a formal commitment for funding".

Paper-mill coating for battery electrodes

The method comes out of Paul Baade's doctoral work at ETH Zurich. His 2021 thesis, "Manufacturing Lithium Ion Batteries: From Marginal Gains to Radical Change", examined curtain coating for battery manufacturing under Professor Vanessa Wood. ETH Zurich filed the method in July 2020 with the two as inventors, and the published application describes two preparations held in separate reservoirs and released together through separate slots, so that a single curtain deposits one functional layer and a second on top of it in one step. A related European patent, EP4186118, was granted on 2 October 2024, and Google Patents lists eightinks AG as its current assignee.

In a Thermo Fisher interview, also published by Battery-Tech Network in January 2025, Paul Baade contrasted the approach with slot-die coating, which handles one layer at a time, and named silicon anodes, lithium iron phosphate cathodes and solid electrolytes as uses. The website lists layers from one to more than eight, thicknesses from under 1 micrometre to over 300, and line speeds up to more than 600 metres a minute, and adds claims of more than four times the output and over 75% less factory floor space.

A pilot line promised, a customer not yet named

The Gebert Rüf Foundation, which funded the company with CHF 150,000 from February 2023 to July 2024, records that 8inks opened its own facilities in Schlieren, began piloting the technology "with selected customers" and was next working with machine suppliers on an in-house pilot line. In the early-2025 interview the company set a goal of a customer demonstration pilot line by the second quarter of 2025. No source found confirms that the line started on schedule.

The most recent description is a profile in Bilanz of 12 October 2026, marked as sponsored Handelszeitung content. It places the company at the Empa innovation centre and says the process is being validated there at industrial prototype scale, with interest from Asia and the automotive sector. None of the company statements found from 2024 to 2026 names a customer, a cell maker or a production line using the process.

1. Patented multilayer coating methodGrantedEP4186118, granted October 2024, assigned to eightinks AG per Google Patents.
2. Industrial-scale pilot linePrototype scaleValidation at Empa at industrial prototype scale, per the October 2026 sponsored profile.
3. Speed and cost advantagesCompany figuresNo independent or customer data published.
4. Industrial customerNot namedPiloting with unnamed customers, per the Gebert Rüf project page.

Money on the record

The May 2024 pre-seed round of almost €3 million was led by Founderful with Übermorgen Ventures, Angel Invest, another.vc, Venture Kick, the ETH Foundation and business angels, according to Batteries News and electrive. Batteries News adds that earlier research and transfer funding from Innosuisse, the Gebert Rüf Foundation, Switzerland Innovation, KlimUp and the Swiss Climate Foundation came to €1.6 million, and put staff at eight.

No later round has been announced in the sources searched. The commercial register, however, shows one. A notice in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce published on 18 June 2026 and reproduced by Moneyhouse records articles amended on 29 May 2026, share capital raised from CHF 136,006.80 to CHF 172,951.70, a new class of 369,449 seed preferred shares, and claims of CHF 5,249,296.24 offset against 310,604 of those shares. Leon Baade became board president and Alexander Langguth joined the board; Founderful partner Lukas Weder is also listed. The register does not show the price per share or the total raised, and the March 2026 notice records Christina Sauter leaving the board.

The EIC part is not yet visible either. A search of CORDIS for "eightinks", "8inks" and the project title on 4 November 2026 returned no project; the EIC said it expected most grant agreements in the round to be finalised within three months of 15 June. No EIC Fund investment in the company has been announced.

Battery equipment as a European question

The Commission's Battery Booster strategy of December 2025 sets aside €1.5 billion of interest-free loans for battery cell producers in their ramp-up phase and lists solid-state batteries among the next innovation steps for the European value chain. The facility opened in June 2026 for cell factories of at least 10 GWh a year, electrive reported. 8inks does not make cells at that scale; it sells coating know-how and production systems for new or existing lines, according to its website. Swiss companies can draw on the EIC again because Switzerland rejoined Horizon Europe as an associated country in 2025, and this round shows the effect: four of the 38 selected companies are Swiss, two of them in battery manufacturing.

The verdict

The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.