Nanogence's EIC Accelerator Bet on Low-Carbon Cement, Revisited

Cement is the glue of concrete, and making it means heating limestone in kilns to about 1,400°C, which releases carbon dioxide twice: from the fuel and from the rock itself. In 2020 Nanogence, a spin-off of the Swiss federal institute of technology in Lausanne (EPFL), told the European Commission it had an additive that would cut that kiln temperature to 800°C, halve the energy demand, reduce the calcium carbonate needed by 30% and raise the compressive strength of concrete by up to 50%, according to the project objective on CORDIS. The Commission's list of winners of the 19 May 2020 Green Deal cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot names NANOGENCE SA of Lausanne, with the acronym ngCon and grant-only funding, as the only company on the project.

The grant was €2,499,000 towards a €3,595,000 project that ran from 1 November 2020 to 31 October 2022. Six years on, Nanogence is operating, has raised a Series A with the EIC Fund among its backers and sells what it now calls a catalyst to concrete producers and contractors in Switzerland, India and the United States. What it sells, though, is not quite what it promised.

Where Nanogence Stands Now

Nanogence SA is listed as existing in the Swiss commercial register, with its seat in Renens, according to Zefix and Moneyhouse, which both show a register entry from 28 April 2026. That entry records statutes amended on 18 March 2026 and an ordinary capital increase in cash and by setting off claims of CHF 1,547,919.58, in exchange for 3,137,280 new A1 shares, which took the fully paid share capital to CHF 185,722.64. The same entry records that founder Abhishek Kumar is no longer chairman, that Sascha Ricanek of Freienbach became chairman, and that Ferry Jacobs and Mahsa Taziki left the board. Who held the converted claims is not public.

The management changed a few months earlier. On 21 August 2025 the company announced Janne Rauramo, who it said had joined "earlier this year", as chief executive, with Kumar moving to chairman of the board. The register entry of 17 November 2025 on Zefix gives Rauramo, from Helsinki, collective signing authority as a director. The company's team page now names ten people in Switzerland, the United States and Bengaluru, and says it has subsidiaries and production facilities in the US and India; the register gives no detail on them, and they could not be verified independently.

Swiss private companies do not have to publish their accounts, so Nanogence's revenue, losses, equity and headcount are not public. The register shows only that the company has had an auditor, SF REVISION Srl of Lausanne, since its board was enlarged in November 2023.

The Technology: From Kilns to Concrete Mixers

Nanogence grew out of Kumar's doctoral work at EPFL on the nanoscale structure of concrete. In December 2016 an EPFL article described the company, then launched after two patents, as developing a single inorganic additive that would replace the "plethora" of chemicals used to tune drying time and hardness, and said it was in talks with two major European concrete producers.

The ngCon proposal went further. The CORDIS objective describes an additive designed to be used at the cement plant, which would lower the calcination temperature in the kiln and the limestone needed, as well as strengthen the final concrete. The Phase 1 feasibility study of 2019, on CORDIS, carried the same claims and added a forecast of yearly profits "of around €1M from each cement plant", which with 250 plants would give "more than €250M by 2024". No revenue figure for Nanogence has been published, so that forecast cannot be checked.

The product the company describes today works later in the chain. Its science page says the catalyst acts on cement particles during hydration, the reaction with water that hardens concrete, so that more of the cement reacts; it notes that modern concrete can contain up to 35% unreacted cement after curing. The claimed effects are 20 to 30% less clinker and energy and 25 to 45% less CO2 when used in cement, and 10 to 20% less cement when used in concrete, with savings that "depend on mix design and regulatory norms". The about page stresses that it is "not a concrete admixture" and claims cost savings of up to 20%. The kiln temperature of 800°C does not appear on its about, science or deployments pages.

The established route to lower-carbon cement is the blended cement, which replaces part of the clinker with other materials; the Phase 1 report on CORDIS presents ngCon as a way to lower the clinker-to-cement ratio and increase the use of such blends, and the 2023 airport release names fly ash and slag as the waste materials it helps incorporate. Nanogence's pitch is that its catalyst lets producers push those substitutes further without losing strength and without changing their process. The size of the gain depends on the mix and has not been published by an independent laboratory; every percentage above comes from the company or its project partners.

What ngCon Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project finished on its planned end date. Only the second periodic report, for November 2021 to October 2022, is published on the CORDIS reporting page. It says the team designed and made "over 70+ formulation of specialized tailored catalyst molecules" that can be dosed at about 1% at the cement or concrete stage, and that with the EIC grant it was able to "demonstrate that we can scale up this technology to commercial volume and do client on-site integration". It names no client, gives no volume, no emission figure and no strength result, and lists as outputs a magazine presentation and a news article. It does not mention the lower calcination temperature at all.

1. Calcination at 800°C instead of 1,400°C, 50% less energyNot achievedNot in the final report, and no cement plant using it has been announced.
2. 30% less calcium carbonate in cementNot achievedNo public result; the website now claims 20 to 30% less clinker.
3. Up to 50% higher compressive strengthUnverifiedNo strength data published by the company or a third party; Tata Projects said control trials were testing strength in 2023.
4. Commercial-volume production and on-site client trialsDeliveredReported on CORDIS; site trials described by Tata Projects in 2023.
5. Partnerships with cement makers, first in Europe and AsiaPartlyConcrete projects in Switzerland and India; no cement manufacturer named.

Measured against its own proposal, ngCon delivered a product that reached building sites. It has not shown the cement-plant breakthrough at the centre of the pitch.

What Nanogence Has Achieved Since the Award

The most concrete evidence of use comes from India. In October 2023 a release published by Startupticker said the developers of Noida International Airport near Delhi were using the catalyst, quoting a project official that it "allows for direct reduction or replacement of up to 20 per cent of cement requirement". Tata Projects, the construction contractor, said control trials were testing compressive strength and slump retention, and Kumar claimed emission cuts of 30 to 60% against mixes made only with Portland cement. Tech.eu also reported the airport work. In September 2025 Nanogence said the airport project had used 65 tons of its product and avoided 158 tons of cement and 142 tons of CO2, according to its own release; those figures have not been confirmed by the airport or the contractor. In June 2025 the company reported that a Tata Projects engineer had won an internal sustainability award for implementing it.

In the United States, the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association gave Kumar one of its first Concrete Innovations Awards in March 2023, describing him as founder of "Nanogence Inc." and saying he had worked with Ernst Concrete to bring the product to the US market, according to Concrete Products. In Switzerland, the company's deployments page describes unnamed projects with a contractor that used 60% recycled concrete and cut admixture use by 25%, and sites where cement was reduced by up to 70 kg per cubic metre. None of the Swiss customers is named.

The Money

In October 2023 Nanogence closed an undisclosed round led by CirCap, with Planet First Partners and the EIC Fund, the European Innovation Council's investment arm, completing it, according to Startupticker and Tech.eu. Global Cement reported that the company had raised US$2.7 million before. The register matches: an entry of 24 November 2023 records a capital increase and new board members Karl Georg Altenburg, a founding partner of CirCap, Clara-Andreea Constantinescu, quoted as a managing partner of Planet First Partners in the round's announcement, and Ferry Jacobs. Constantinescu left the board in February 2025, when Sergio Henrique Collaço de Carvalho of London joined.

Nanogence's 2020 award was grant only, but the company is on the official list of EIC Fund portfolio companies, under the sector Advanced Manufacturing and Advanced Materials. The size of the EIC Fund's stake and the amount of the Series A have not been disclosed. The capital increases registered in February and September 2025 and April 2026 show that money kept coming in after the round, but the register does not show how much was paid per share, and the April 2026 conversion of more than CHF 1.5 million of claims suggests the company had been financed partly through loans in between.

Why Europe Should Care

The calcium carbonate in cement is "the major responsible for the CO2 emissions", as Nanogence's own Phase 1 objective puts it, which is why fuel switching alone cannot clean up the industry. The EU has put it at the centre of its climate rules: cement is one of the goods covered by the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which "applies in its definitive regime from 1 January 2026", according to the European Commission. Anything that lets producers use less clinker per tonne of concrete, without new kilns or carbon capture plants, lowers the carbon cost that European producers and importers now pay. A European supplier of such an additive also fits the Green Deal call under which ngCon was funded.

The catch is that Nanogence's visible commercial traction is largely outside the EU. Its best-documented site is an Indian airport, its award came from an American industry body, and its listed subsidiaries are in the US and India. No EU cement producer has said publicly that it uses the product.

The Verdict

Nanogence has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.