Lumo Analytics' EIC Accelerator Scanner Went to a Canadian Buyer

Mines decide where to dig and how to process the ore from drill cores, and most of the analysis happens far away in a lab. Lumo Analytics, a 2021 spin-off of Aalto University in Helsinki, scans the cores on site with laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, LIBS: a laser pulse vaporises a tiny spot of rock, and the light from the resulting plasma shows which elements it contains. According to its buyer, the scanner extends on-site analysis to light elements and rare earths.

The EIC Accelerator selected Lumo at its October 2024 cut-off for a grant of €2,495,500, according to CORDIS, to add something miners currently wait months for: an estimate of how hard the rock is to grind. On 17 December 2025, seven months into the project, the Canadian company GeologicAI announced that it had acquired Lumo. The EIC project continues under the Finnish company.

From an Aalto lab to mine sites

Aalto University researchers built large-area scanning LIBS instruments for geologists, and a university project to commercialise them ended in 2021 with the founding of Lumo Analytics, according to an Aalto research plan. The Finnish Trade Register lists Lumo Analytics Oy from April 2021, based in Helsinki. Antti Kotanen is co-founder and CEO.

The business grew steadily. Revenue rose from €72,000 in 2021 to €212,000 in 2022, €776,000 in 2023 and about €1.3 million in 2024, and stayed at about €1.3 million in 2025, according to Vainu, which draws on the filed accounts. The team grew from 2 to 21 people. Losses grew as well, to €893,000 in 2025, and the equity ratio fell from 61% in 2023 to 3% at the end of 2025.

Composition in minutes, hardness next

LIBS works on the core as it comes out of the ground, without crushing or chemicals, and Lumo's scanner maps elements along the core surface. What it could not tell miners was how the rock would behave in a mill. That depends on its hardness, which today comes from lab tests such as the Bond ball mill work index, with a wait of two to three months, according to the CORDIS summary. Earlier hardness data would let mines plan with less wasted energy, chemicals and waste rock, the project argues.

LASO-LIBS is to deliver on-site estimates of hardness, elemental composition and mineral composition from one system, and the project links that to EU self-sufficiency in critical raw materials.

The first EIC year

The first periodic report, for May 2025 to April 2026, describes a busy year. Lumo built a next-generation scanner with better robustness, stability and automation; a container-based field system validated under real field conditions; satellite links over Starlink for real-time data transfer; machine learning for quantitative elemental analysis, detection of carbon origin and halogens such as fluorine, and mineral classification; and a data platform. For hardness, it developed a method that estimates mechanical properties from the sound of the laser shots, integrated it with the hardware and collected first datasets.

The report gives no accuracy figures and names no customers or pilot sites, though it says the methods were validated with customer data and in pilot deployments. It does not mention the sale to GeologicAI.

1. Field-ready scanning systemDeliveredContainer-based system validated in field conditions, per the periodic report.
2. Hardness from laser-induced acousticsEarly dataMethod integrated and validated, first datasets collected; no accuracy published.
3. Elemental and mineral analysis by machine learningReported"High accuracy" claimed without numbers.
4. Project completion by April 2027Too earlyThe project is still running under the new owner.

Sold to a Calgary rock analytics company

GeologicAI, founded in Calgary in 2013, sells sensor and AI systems that analyse drill cores and had raised a Series B of about $61 million, BetaKit reported. It said Lumo's LIBS scanner "completes" its on-site sensor suite and extends it to rare earths and light elements; its engineering head Steve Buckley called it "the most compact and efficient LIBS scanner available in the market". GeologicAI promised to keep supplying and supporting all of Lumo's products and to keep investing in the technology. The price was not disclosed.

The sale raises the question every acquired EIC company raises. The grant was given to a Finnish company to strengthen European supply of critical raw materials; the technology is now owned by a Canadian group that sells worldwide. Lumo Analytics Oy still coordinates the project, so the EU retains its reporting, but the owner, GeologicAI, is based in Calgary.