Nextmol Brings EIC Accelerator Money to Virtual Surfactant Testing

Specialty chemical makers have long developed surfactants, polymers and additives by experimental trial and error, which Nextmol's investors call too slow for an industry in transition. Nextmol, the trading name of Barcelona's Bytelab Solutions SL, sells software that runs part of that work as a simulation instead. Its NEXTMOL Lab platform combines molecular modelling, machine learning and cloud supercomputing so that a formulator can see how a surfactant or polymer is likely to behave before it is synthesised.

The EIC Accelerator winner spreadsheet lists the company's NEXTBIOMOL project under the 12 March 2025 cut-off, for blended finance. CORDIS records a grant agreement signed on 8 October 2025, an EU contribution of €2,468,494.24 and a project running from 3 November 2025 to 2 November 2027. The company announced the award on the project's start date. The project is a year old, so this article sets out what was promised and what can already be checked.

Where the company stands

The Spanish commercial register, as compiled by Empresia, records Bytelab Solutions as active. Its gazette entries show the incorporation in April 2019, a move to Calle Mallorca in Barcelona in September 2023, a new board in April 2024 with Mónica de Mier Torrecilla as president and managing director, Stephan Mohr and Ahmet Gokhan Guner as members, and two capital increases in the same month. In June 2026 the register published the loss of the company's status as an emerging company under Spain's start-up law, effective 9 April 2026, seven years after its incorporation deed. einforma gives the same address and capital, gives 2025 as the year of its latest accounts deposit and records 11 employees for 2025; the staff figure could not be checked against a second source.

The company's own news page shows steady activity through 2026: a biopolymers collaboration with Mevaldi in April, a distribution agreement with the Japanese scientific software distributor Filgen in June, a collaboration with Indovinya, the surfactant division of Indorama Ventures, in July, a partnership with Zastra Innovations in India in August, and a poster at the European Colloid and Interface Society conference in September. In September 2025 it says it won a start-up pitch at Beiersdorf Connect 2025.

The technology: chemistry run on a supercomputer

Specialty chemical development has traditionally been experimental: a team synthesises variants, measures them and repeats. The investors' release of May 2024 describes Nextmol's alternative as "molecular characterization without the need for chemical synthesis", with a focus on complex polymer and surfactant chemistries. The NEXTBIOMOL objective describes the platform as a combination of molecular modelling, machine learning and high-performance computing. The company website lists applications in surfactants, polymers, lubricant additives and biosurfactants, and a molecule builder that runs in the browser.

What sets it apart from conventional simulation software, on the company's own account, is packaging: the 2022 CORDIS project describes a software-as-a-service platform for chemistry R&D, and the 2024 release speaks of "making accessible the most advanced computational solutions to companies of all sizes". Neither source names a competing product, and no published comparison with established modelling suites could be found.

The size of the benefit has been stated differently over time. The 2022 CORDIS objective says NEXTMOL accelerates development "by 10x over traditional approaches". The May 2024 release gives up to 9 times lower cost and 5 times faster timelines, the 2025 NEXTBIOMOL objective gives up to 9 times lower cost and up to 5 times less time, and the website today says research is 80% faster and costs 90% lower. These are company claims. No independent validation study, benchmark against laboratory results or customer case with numbers could be found in public.

What NEXTBIOMOL promises

The project sits under the EIC Accelerator challenge on "Acceleration of advanced materials development and upscaling along the value chain", call HORIZON-EIC-2025-ACCELERATOR-02, per CORDIS. CORDIS lists the EU contribution but no total project cost. According to the CORDIS objective and the company's announcement, the two years are to be spent developing the platform further for bio-based polymers and surfactants and generative artificial intelligence, and widening it to materials for energy, electronics and construction. The company also says the project received the STEP Seal of the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform; the seal is not shown on the CORDIS page.

The award was blended finance, which pairs the grant with a possible EIC Fund equity investment. A web search on 28 October 2026 found no announced EIC Fund investment in Nextmol or Bytelab Solutions, and the company's announcement names no amount for either part.

1. Platform for polymer and surfactant chemistriesExistsNEXTMOL Lab is marketed for surfactants, polymers and biosurfactants on the company website.
2. Bio-based materials applicationsUnder wayBiopolymer work with Mevaldi and EO-free solubilisers with Indovinya announced in 2026; no results published.
3. Energy, electronics and construction materialsNot shownNo application in these fields announced on the company's news page.
4. Up to 9 times lower cost, 5 times fasterClaimNo independent benchmark or customer figures in public.

The money

The first EU project CORDIS records for the company was small. A Women TechEU coordination and support action paid €75,000 for an eight-month project from June 2022 to January 2023, whose objective says it would "prepare us to raise private investment in Q3 2022". The round came later: on 27 May 2024, Axon Partners Group announced Nextmol's first funding round, led by ACT Venture Partners with Axon, Abac Nest Venture Capital and GROW Venture Partners, and The SaaS News reported the same investors. Neither gives an amount.

The register shows what the round did to the share capital, not what was paid for it. Capital stood at €25,000 at incorporation, €26,316 after a 2020 increase, and €36,329.15 after two increases published in April 2024. Empresia states that the company "tiene una facturación anual entre 500.000 y 1.000.000 euros", a turnover bracket of €500,000 to €1 million; einforma classifies it as a micro company. Neither publishes the underlying accounts for free, so no revenue or result figure is given here.

Those clients are not named. The homepage shows logos including Repsol, L'Oréal Research and Innovation, Clariant and Indorama Ventures under the heading "Trusted and supported by", alongside the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Amazon Web Services and the NVIDIA Inception programme. The heading does not say which logos are paying customers, and no customer contract has been announced.

Why Europe funds it

The European chemical industry is under pressure. On 8 July 2025 the Commission presented a Chemicals Industry Action Plan for a sector of about 29,000 companies and 1.2 million direct jobs, citing high energy costs, unfair global competition and weak demand, and promising EU Innovation and Substitution Hubs and Horizon Europe money for safer, more sustainable substitutes, as IOM3 also summarised. NEXTBIOMOL's stated aim, screening bio-based surfactants and polymers on a computer, falls under that substitution agenda, and the EIC funded it under its advanced materials challenge. Whether NEXTMOL Lab actually cuts development time by the margins claimed is what the next year of the project should show.

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