Floatech Commits EIC Accelerator Money to All-Silicon Anodes

Graphite is the standard anode material of lithium-ion batteries, and the EU project that is now funding its replacement says Europe imports more than 90% of its battery-grade graphite from China. Floatech, a Madrid company spun out of the IMDEA Materials Institute in 2021, wants to replace the graphite entirely with silicon. Its process grows silicon nanowires in a gas stream and collects them as a freestanding sheet, which the company sells as Si-Coil and says can go into a cell as the whole anode, without copper foil, binders or solvents.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, INSPIRE, at its 1 October 2025 cut-off for blended finance, under the challenge for advanced materials. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,499,491.75, a grant agreement signed on 29 May 2026 and a project running from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2028. Five months into that period there is little to check against the plan, so this article sets out what the company has promised, what it has shown so far, and which parts rest only on its own word.

Silicon without the usual scaffolding

On paper, silicon holds far more charge than graphite. Graphite's theoretical capacity tops out at 372 milliampere hours per gram, while silicon's is roughly ten times higher, according to both Wikipedia's survey of lithium-silicon batteries and a PatSnap Eureka review of June 2025. The two disagree on the exact silicon figure (about 3,600 against about 4,200 mAh/g) and on how much silicon swells when it takes up lithium (to about 320% of its original volume in one, a volume change of up to 300% in the other), and Wikipedia notes that this volume change makes silicon anodes lose capacity over repeated cycles.

Floatech's answer comes from research in IMDEA Materials' Multifunctional Nanocomposites group, led by Juan José Vilatela. IMDEA described the method in November 2021 as assembling silicon nanowires suspended in a gas into a flexible, textile-like network, skipping the solvent-based steps of conventional electrode making. The INSPIRE summary names the process floating catalyst chemical vapour deposition: silane gas is turned directly into freestanding nanowire "silicon paper", which removes the copper foil, binders, solvents, coating and drying that a graphite anode needs. The company's website claims "total control of silicon expansion"; it publishes no data for that claim.

The CORDIS summary gives the company's figures: a capacity of 3,100 mAh/g, which it calls ten times graphite's; more than 60% higher energy density at cell level, over 350 Wh/kg in multilayer pouch cells; charging in under ten minutes; 250 or more deep cycles in pouch cells; and a projected cost of €5 per kWh. None of these figures appears in a peer-reviewed paper or an independent test report among the sources found for this article. A cycle life of 250 deep cycles is also a figure the project itself reports as a demonstration, not as a product specification.

What has been built so far

The company raised €1.2 million in November 2023, led by GROW Venture Partners with Big Sur Ventures and the state fund CDTI Innvierte, to build a pilot plant in Getafe, as reported by Capital-Riesgo.es and listed on the company's news page. The plan then was to start operating in the first quarter of 2024, supply anode rolls to industrial customers for validation and triple the headcount.

The facilities opened later than that. The Madrid regional government said on 17 February 2025 that its science councillor, Emilio Viciana, had attended the inauguration of the new Getafe premises that day, and Periódico Avenida reported the same event. The company's own release on its May 2025 round dates the 1 MWh demonstration plant to September 2024. The regional government's release also said Floatech had already made sales in Europe and the United States and held more than 60 patent applications; neither the buyers nor the patent numbers are named.

Two outside laboratories appear in the record. Floatech's website says the Basque research centre CIDETEC assembled full cells with its 100% silicon anodes, an item it dates to January 2024 and links to a report on Spanish public television, and the CORDIS summary says the material has been validated at technology readiness level 6 with CIDETEC and a Fraunhofer institute. Neither CIDETEC nor Fraunhofer has published results for the Floatech material among the sources reviewed on 4 November 2026.

What INSPIRE promises

The EIC project is the bridge between the Getafe line and the car industry. According to the CORDIS objective, pilots with InoBat, Basquevolt, StorTera and Honda are to deliver A-sample validations of hundreds of cells and B-sample validations of thousands, to speed up qualification by carmakers. Those four names come from the project summary alone: a search on 4 November 2026 found no announcement by any of the four of a pilot with Floatech. The silicon anode investment Honda announced on 28 May 2026, through Honda Xcelerator Ventures, is in a different company, the British firm Nexeon, as reported by S&P Global Mobility and Battery-Tech.

1. Material at TRL 6ClaimedStated in CORDIS; the CIDETEC full-cell work is reported by the company, with no published results.
2. Production lineExistsGetafe facilities inaugurated 17 February 2025, per the Comunidad de Madrid.
3. A-sample and B-sample cells with four partnersToo earlyPlanned in CORDIS; no partner has announced a pilot.
4. €5/kWh projected costProjectionNo cost model published.

Small rounds, a larger grant

Before the EIC, Floatech's announced money came in small amounts. After the 2023 round, it raised €1 million in May 2025, again led by GROW Venture Partners, with existing investors Big Sur Ventures, Suma Capital and CDTI Innvierte and with Banco Sabadell joining through BStartup, according to Capital-Riesgo.es and the company's news page. The company says it also holds a Spanish NEOTEC grant and a Madrid regional grant co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund; it gives no amounts for either. Its parent institute held a €150,000 ERC proof of concept grant, Electrofloat, from April 2023 to September 2024, to de-risk the process and draw up a scale-up roadmap to 1 GWh a year; CORDIS lists IMDEA as the only beneficiary, with Floatech's chief executive on its industrialisation team.

IMDEA Materials wrote on 2 March 2026 that the selection opens the door to up to €10 million from the EIC and public investors. That is a ceiling, not a commitment: no EIC Fund investment in Floatech has been announced, and a search of EIC Fund coverage on 4 November 2026 found no listing. A February 2026 release by the investor Big Sur Ventures mentions Floatech's third Seal of Excellence, under the EU's STEP platform; the EIC's own announcement of 17 February 2026 counts 61 selected companies from the round without naming them, and gives €467 million as the amount they requested.

The company on the register

The Madrid commercial register entries, as compiled by Empresia from the official gazette BORME, show Floatech SL incorporated with €20,000 of share capital, entered on 21 October 2021, with Richard Schäufele as sole administrator. A board replaced him as sole administrator in September 2023; in December 2023 Vilatela became chair and Francisco Badia of GROW Venture Partners joined as director and secretary. Four capital increases took share capital to €32,022 by October 2024, and the company was recognised as an empresa emergente under Spain's 2022 start-up law from 21 November 2023. The latest entry, of August 2025, appoints a new director. The entries listed show no concurso de acreedores and give no staff numbers; the registered address matches the coordinator address in CORDIS. The original BORME notices were not obtained for this review.

Why Brussels backs a graphite substitute

The INSPIRE summary says the EU imports more than 90% of its battery-grade graphite from China. Fastmarkets reported in May 2024 that battery-grade graphite stayed on the strategic raw materials list in the final Critical Raw Materials Act, and that synthetic graphite makes up 70% to 80% of European anode demand, almost all of it supplied from China; the 2023 round announcement reported by Capital-Riesgo.es put China's share of graphite supply at about 80%. The project's case for public money is an anode that needs no graphite at all. The silicon itself comes from silane gas, and the sources reviewed do not say where Floatech's silane is made.

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