EIC Accelerator Winner Grapheal and the PFAS Water Testing Race

Since 12 January 2026, every drinking water supplier in the EU has had to keep PFAS, the "forever chemicals", under a legal limit, and the reference method for checking, according to the EIC project discussed here, still means a laboratory and weeks of waiting. The European Commission's implementation page for the Drinking Water Directive sets 0.1 micrograms per litre for the sum of 20 PFAS and 0.5 micrograms per litre for PFAS in total, and leaves member states to apply one or both. Its news item of 12 January 2026 adds the obligations that follow: monitor, report exceedances, act on them and tell the public.

Grapheal, a 2019 spin-off of the CNRS Institut Néel in Grenoble, says it can move that test out of the laboratory. Its PFAST project, selected by the EIC Accelerator at the October 2025 cut-off for blended finance, describes a credit-card-sized graphene sensor meant to give on-site results in minutes rather than the weeks a lab analysis by LC-MS/MS takes. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,499,282.63 from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2028. The project is five months old; this article sets out what it promised and what can be checked today.

Three to five employees, six product lines

The French register, read through the state's company directory on 4 November 2026, shows GRAPHEAL as an active SAS created on 25 April 2019, with Vincent Bouchiat as president, Ernst & Young et Autres as statutory auditor and a headcount bracket of 3 to 5 employees for 2024. The official gazette BODACC lists nine notices for the company: its creation, two capital changes in early 2021, annual accounts for every year from 2020 to 2024, and a move of the registered office published in November 2025. No collective proceeding appears among them. The 2024 accounts, published in January 2026, were filed with a confidentiality declaration under article L. 232-25 of the Commercial Code, so no revenue or result is public.

The company's website lists six product lines: Polygraph transparent conductive films, Graphsensor wireless pollutant sensors, TestNpass digital test strips, the GraphSkin and WoundLAB patches for sweat and wound monitoring, the GraphLAB research instrument, and PFAST. It names no customer. It says the company works with industrial partners on proofs of concept, and lists Khalifa University, the CEA, Ifremer, EDYTEM and LG NOVA among its partners.

From Covid-19 strips to forever chemicals

PFAS is not Grapheal's first application. In March 2021 the Graphene Flagship announced a €1.9 million seed round from the Belgian incubator Novalis Biotech and private investors, to develop WoundLAB and TestNPass, a graphene saliva test for SARS-CoV-2 priced under €10, then in an observational trial at Grenoble University Hospital. The release said the test could reach the market by the end of 2021 if the trials succeeded. French Healthcare dates the same round to December 2020, a timing that differs from the March 2021 announcement.

TestNPass won a Best in Innovation award at CES in January 2022, one of 15 among more than 1,800 products, as Printed Electronics Now and French Healthcare reported. French Healthcare added that the company hoped to launch it in the United States by the end of 2022 and had launched a €10 million round to build a pilot factory. A web search on 4 November 2026 found no CE marking, US authorisation or sales figure for TestNPass, and no announcement that the €10 million round closed.

How a graphene transistor detects PFAS

The sensor is a graphene field-effect transistor. As Techniques de l'Ingénieur described it in July 2026, graphene is grown from methane on copper foil at high temperature, transferred with a polymer onto a flexible film carrying a printed circuit, and coated with a receptor layer that binds PFAS. When molecules attach, the electrostatic charge changes the graphene's conductance, and electrodes and an antenna turn that into a digital reading sent to a phone. The planned device combines eight sensors with eight different receptors, to build a contamination profile that the company says goes beyond the 20 PFAS regulated for drinking water.

The established alternative is liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), which the CORDIS summary describes as laboratory-bound and slow, with results in weeks. The company's claim, repeated in the CORDIS summary and the June 2026 release reported by analytica-world, is that PFAST is ten times more sensitive than existing field-deployable PFAS tools. Neither source names the tools compared or gives a detection limit for PFAST.

The one published figure comes from the precursor work. The FluoroGraph joint laboratory with EDYTEM, a CNRS and Université Savoie Mont Blanc unit, started in January 2024 for 54 months with €362,999 from the French research agency ANR. In April 2024 the partners presented a card-sized prototype, and Aquatech reported that initial tests on PFOA in shower water detected about 300 nanograms per litre, with a detection threshold "in the range of 100 ng/L". That is below the 500 ng/L total limit and at the 100 ng/L sum limit, for one compound rather than a sum of 20, and it is the partners' own figure, not an independent test. The CNRS published the partners' press release on 17 April 2024.

What PFAST promises

The CORDIS fact sheet sits under the EIC challenge for advanced materials upscaling along the value chain. It describes results in minutes for water treatment operators, continuous monitoring of treatment filters to cut operating costs, and a contribution to EU technological sovereignty in advanced materials and sensing. The release reported by analytica-world adds a planned market launch in 2027, a carbon footprint for graphene sensors of 20% of silicon equivalents, and eight patent families with more than 50 patents. Lyon Capitale reported the same 2027 launch and about 50 patents, and wrote that the sensor was still in development and not on sale. The patent count was not checked against a patent database for this article.

Techniques de l'Ingénieur reported that the grant is meant to test the sensor in real conditions with large French water companies, at wastewater plants and hazardous-waste treatment sites where inlet and outlet water could be compared. None of those companies is named. The June release says Europe's largest water utilities have shown strong interest, also without names.

1. Working PFAS sensor prototypePartly shown2024 demonstrator detected PFOA at about 300 ng/L, per the partners (Aquatech).
2. Ten times the sensitivity of field toolsClaimNo comparison, method or detection limit published.
3. Field tests with water companiesNot yet publicPlanned, per Techniques de l'Ingénieur; no partner or site named.
4. Market launch in 2027PendingAnnounced June 2026; project runs to May 2028.

A grant signed, an investment still conditional

The EIC selected PFAST for blended finance, the mix of grant and equity that 85% of the 61 companies in the round naming Grapheal were selected for, according to Open Access Government on 17 February 2026. CORDIS records only the grant, signed on 28 May 2026. Techniques de l'Ingénieur reported that the European Investment Bank has offered a €4 million investment that is released only if Grapheal raises the same amount from a private investor, and quoted Bouchiat: "Nous recherchons des co-investisseurs. Nous voudrions implanter une usine en France." The EIC Fund portfolio, all 16 pages of which were read on 4 November 2026, does not list Grapheal. The company's site also lists a France 2030 grant from ADEME under the INNOV'EAU call in February 2025, and the company directory records ADEME aid; no amount is published.

Why the EU has a stake in it

The Drinking Water Directive's PFAS limits now apply, and the Commission's January 2026 note tells member states to monitor and act on exceedances. Bouchiat said in the June 2026 release that regulatory pressure is accelerating adoption of portable rapid PFAS sensors. Grapheal's partners argued in 2024, as Aquatech reported, that an on-site device allows more frequent testing at lower cost than laboratory analysis, and the CORDIS summary adds continuous monitoring of treatment filters. The project sits in the EIC's challenge for advanced materials upscaling, and its summary presents it as a contribution to EU technological sovereignty in advanced materials and smart sensing; the company's release adds that its graphene does not rely on critical materials. How closely the sensor's readings match a laboratory analysis has not been published.

Grapheal was not asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.