An EIC Accelerator Detour: TiHive's Terahertz Diaper Inspection

Terahertz light sits between microwaves and infrared. It can see through many non-metallic materials and shows what is inside a product without touching it, and TiHive describes it as a safe part of the spectrum, unlike X-rays. Terahertz systems have usually relied on lasers or compound semiconductors, which TiHive's own CORDIS report contrasts with its approach. TiHive, founded in 2017 in the Grenoble area, generates and detects it with standard CMOS chips, the same silicon process used for consumer electronics, and puts the chips into cameras that watch production lines.

In the EIC Accelerator pilot's 9 October 2019 cut-off, the European Commission selected TiHive, then listed in Meylan, for blended finance, with the project TULIPZ. The company is the only row for that project in the list, and the only participant on CORDIS, which records an EU grant of €2,360,750 towards a total cost of €3,372,500. The pitch was technical textiles, composites for wind blades, aerospace and cars. The product that came out of it inspects diapers.

Where TiHive Stands Now

TiHive is operating. On 2 October 2025 it announced an €8 million round from the EIC Fund, the venture firm Karista and Wind, a €130 million Article 9 fund, according to the company's press release, published by the Minalogic cluster and reported by Tech.eu and optics.org. The release says its systems are deployed in the Netherlands, the United States, Italy and Greece and are "adopted by several leaders in the hygiene sector"; it names no customer. TiHive's share capital rose from €75,000 to €151,732 in a change published in June 2025, and its accounts for 2025 were filed in August 2026, according to the official BODACC notices. The register records no insolvency proceedings.

The Technology: Terahertz on a Silicon Chip

The company's final EIC report claims a list of firsts for a terahertz system: several cameras and sources on one line, edge-to-cloud data, CMOS chips "versus complex compounds and laser-based technologies", and high speed in a harsh factory setting. None of these claims has been tested independently in public. TiHive's chip, built in a 65 nm process with foundry partners that include STMicroelectronics, produces cameras of 1,000 pixels at 12-bit resolution that run at 1,000 frames per second in the 300 to 600 GHz band, chief executive Hani Sherry told eeNews Europe in September 2020. "This can democratise terahertz sensing in a similar fashion to smartphones," he said. Another trade title, Imaging and Machine Vision Europe, gave the imaging speed as 5,000 frames per second in its report on the same award; the two specifications do not match.

In diaper production, the cameras measure how much super-absorbent polymer goes into each product on lines that make 1,200 items a minute. Manufacturers overdose the polymer to stay on the safe side, which eeNews Europe reported costs the industry €1 billion to €2 billion a year. TiHive's own figure is that one equipped line saves up to 300 tonnes of polymer a year, which it equates to 1,500 tonnes of CO2, per its 2025 release. That saving is the company's claim; no customer or independent study confirming it has been published. The diaper application, sold as SAPMonit, won the 2023 RISE Innovation Award at the conference of the US nonwovens association INDA, according to Innovation in Textiles. TiHive sells it as an annual subscription that bundles the equipment, the AI analytics and support.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The TULIPZ objective describes a plug-and-play terahertz system with deep-learning software, offered as a service, for "automotive, aerospace, robotics, medical, and technical textiles" and composites such as wind turbine blades. It promised customers "a 5x increase in productivity, equipment uptime of 99.99% and a reduction in production waste by 5%", and stated the ambition "to become world leader in distributed inspection for high quality, performance engineered products, in particular technical textiles by 2025." The project ran from 1 April 2020 to 31 July 2022, on its original schedule.

The final periodic report tells a narrower story. The commercial strategy had become "customers in the 'high volume' sectors, starting by product makers in the personal care and hygiene industries", and the company wrote that TULIPZ let it "fully finalise our hardware and software platforms to serve the market of hygiene producers". It reports a modular multi-camera terahertz system and a cloud platform, trials with several customers through an early access programme, "first commercial contracts", and systems measuring about 1 million products a week in the final year. The report names no customer and gives no revenue. No results, deliverables or publications are listed on CORDIS, and TULIPZ is the company's only EU project there.

1. Modular terahertz multi-camera systemDeliveredFinal CORDIS report; sold commercially per the 2025 release.
2. Cloud and AI inspection platformDeliveredReported in CORDIS; offered on the company website.
3. Inspection-as-a-service with paying customersPartlySubscription model and first contracts reported; no customer or revenue is public.
4. Technical textiles, composites, automotive and aerospaceNot achievedHygiene became the market; textiles and aerospace are listed as new targets in 2025.
5. 5x productivity, 99.99% uptime, 5% less wasteUnverifiedNo customer data published.

The Money, and the Equity Question

When the award was announced, eeNews Europe reported €8.6 million in total, €2.3 million as grant and €6.3 million as equity, figures repeated in its French edition. Imaging and Machine Vision Europe described the same €8.6 million simply as "awarded" by the Accelerator, without the split.

TiHive appears in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, under the TULIPZ description, with no amount or date. The 2025 release calls the EIC Fund "TiHive's long-standing partner", and Svetoslava Georgieva, chair of the EIC Fund board, is quoted as saying the fund was "glad to continue our journey with TiHive", which indicates the fund was a shareholder before the 2025 round. The register adds a puzzle: BODACC publishes no capital increase between May 2018, when share capital reached €83,333, and June 2025; in between, a notice of March 2023 shows capital cut back to €75,000. When and in what form the EIC equity was paid, and whether it was the full €6.3 million, could not be verified.

TiHive files its accounts with a confidentiality declaration under article L. 232-25 of the French commercial code, so its income statements are not public, according to BODACC. The state's company directory shows a net loss of €763,698 for 2023 and revenue of €0. That revenue figure conflicts with the company's statements that it signed commercial contracts in 2022 and sells subscriptions; the actual revenue could not be verified.

A Team That Did Not Grow

Reporting on the 2020 award said TiHive was building testing facilities and laboratories and would "hire ten additional staff, bringing the headcount to 25" by 2021, per Imaging and Machine Vision Europe. Five years later, the 2025 release lists a "current team" of 14, and the register places the company in the 10 to 19 employee band for 2024. The leadership also changed: Clément Jany was introduced as chief technology officer in 2020 by eeNews Europe, while the 2025 release names only the two founders, Hani Sherry and Carlos Prada; Nicolas Beaudouin, managing director from 2018, left that role in 2023, according to BODACC. Jany's current role could not be verified.

Why It Matters for Europe

TiHive designs its own terahertz chips and says it produces, assembles and validates its systems in Europe. That fits the aim of the European Chips Act to keep chip design and new semiconductor applications in Europe, and terahertz electronics are also a candidate technology for 6G links, which the company names as a future market. Cutting overdosed raw material in mass-produced hygiene goods serves the waste and resource goals of the EU's Circular Economy Action Plan, though the size of the saving rests on TiHive's own figures.

The Verdict

TiHive and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.