Armenta: 7 Years After Its EIC Accelerator Grant to Treat Mastitis

Mastitis, an inflammation of the udder usually caused by bacteria, is the most common disease of dairy cows, and the standard treatment is antibiotics. Armenta, a company in Kfar Saba, Israel, sells a hand-held device that fires low-energy acoustic pulses, a form of shockwave therapy used in human medicine, into the infected udder instead. In the European Innovation Council's October 2019 round it won a grant of €2,245,379.50 to build the next generation of that equipment, according to CORDIS.

Seven years after the selection, Armenta is still a registered, active company and still publishes field studies. What the public record does not show is any of the three new products the EU paid to develop: a lighter hand-held device, an automated treatment station for large farms, and an in-line detector that flags mastitis during milking. The station still sits under "In the Pipeline" on the company's product page.

Where Armenta Stands Now

The Israeli Corporations Authority lists Armenta Ltd as an active private company, incorporated on 4 June 2018, registered at HaTa'as 20 in Kfar Saba, with its latest annual report filed for 2026, according to the authority's open company register. OpenCorporates also shows it as active, but still at an older address, 8 HaPnina Street in Ra'anana, the same address CB Insights gives. CORDIS recorded a third address, 5 HaSharon Street in Kfar Saba, when the grant was signed. The register gives the founding date as 2018; CB Insights says 2017.

The company is still selling and marketing. Its website names distributors or local contacts for North America, South America, India, Italy, Slovakia and Belarus, and a new treatment protocol was posted on its protocol page in February 2025. In December 2025 the Slovak breeders' magazine InfoMagazín ran a feature on the therapy co-written by Armenta's chief scientist, Gabriel Leitner, and the company's Slovak contact, Iris Salomon Har-Even.

Who runs the company is not consistent across sources. The About Us page names Chen Raizman as chief executive. The Slovak article of December 2025 quotes Gil Hakim as Armenta's chief executive, the title he held in 2020 according to Innovation News Network and Open Access Government, where he signed an article as chairman and CEO.

The Technology: Shockwaves Instead of Antibiotics

Acoustic pulse therapy, also called low-intensity shockwave therapy, has been used in human medicine for inflammatory and ischaemic conditions for more than two decades, according to the CORDIS summary. Armenta's APT-X generates the pulses by firing one mass against another with compressed air, and passes them through a detachable applicator held against the udder. The company says the pulses trigger anti-inflammatory and blood-vessel-forming responses that help the cow clear the infection itself. A treatment takes a few minutes per session over several days, and unlike antibiotics it does not require farmers to discard the milk, the company's product page says.

The difference from the established route matters for farmers. Antibiotic treatment means days of discarded milk and, in the EU, increasingly strict rules. A study presented on Engormix in December 2024 by an Argentine mastitis consultant and a Chilean veterinary firm, drawing on 32 commercial farms in Chile in 2023, put the milk discarded per case at 180 litres with antibiotics against 22.5 litres with APT.

What the Studies Show, and Who Wrote Them

The clinical evidence is consistent but comes almost entirely from Armenta's own circle. A retrospective study in PLOS ONE in May 2024 compared 222 treated and 245 untreated cows with subclinical mastitis in four Israeli herds between 2017 and 2019. Treated cows were cured of the bacteria in 83.9% of cases against 32.7%, and 1.35% were culled for mastitis against 16.7%. Two of the seven authors, including Leitner, list Armenta as their affiliation; the paper states that "no competing interests exist".

A study of 129 cows in three Israeli herds in Frontiers in Veterinary Science in March 2023 found a bacterial cure rate of 67.1% for recent infections but only 22.2% for chronic ones; three of its eleven authors are Armenta employees and the company supplied the device and protocol. The first published trial, in PLOS ONE in July 2018, was co-written by Leitner and Eduard Papirov. No independent, multi-country randomised trial without company authors could be found.

The company's own numbers for how many cows have been treated have grown fast and do not agree with each other. In February 2020 it cited more than 850 cows in nine countries; in November 2020 more than 2,000 in more than 12 countries. Today its field results page says 2,100 cows in 17 countries, the home page says 6,000 cows on 110 farms, and the protocol page says over 20,000.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

Armenta was selected with a grant only in the October 2019 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, and appears as the sole company of the APT project in the European Commission's list of selected companies. The grant was signed on 20 March 2020, and the project ran from 1 April 2020 to 30 June 2022, with a total cost of €3,207,685, of which the EU paid €2,245,379.50, according to CORDIS.

The goal was a second generation of the equipment: a lighter, smart hand-held device (APT-X2h) with a more durable applicator (AM-3), a treatment station (APT-X2e) so that medium and large farms could treat many cows without extra labour, and an in-line, real-time somatic cell detector to catch mastitis early. Armenta's Horizon 2020 page said these products were "planned to be launched upon completion of the Horizon 2020 project, on 2H/2022".

The final periodic report, covering April 2021 to June 2022, says an improved hand-held design and a more durable applicator were developed, a treatment station was developed, and work was done on the somatic cell detector, and that two patents had been granted. It gives no test results, units built or customers. CORDIS lists no deliverables and only one publication, the 2018 paper that predates the grant.

1. Second-generation hand-held device and durable applicatorDeveloped, not launchedReported as developed in CORDIS; the user manual Armenta published in November 2022 is still for the first-generation APT-X1.
2. Treatment station for large farmsNot launchedStill listed as the "EcoMilk Station" under "In the Pipeline" on the product page.
3. In-line somatic cell detectorNot deliveredNo product, launch or customer announced by the company or any third party.
4. Launch in the second half of 2022MissedNo launch announced since the project closed on 30 June 2022.
5. Project completed on scheduleDeliveredEnded on the planned date with a final report published.

The user manual is the clearest piece of evidence. Revision 5, dated 6 November 2022 and published on Armenta's website, describes the APT-X1 system, four months after the EU project that was to replace it had ended. No later manual or product name could be found.

The Money

How Armenta has financed itself since the grant could not be verified. Israeli private companies do not publish accounts. CB Insights names Dairy Farmers of America among its backers; DairyReporter and the company's news page confirm that Armenta joined the cooperative's accelerator in 2020, but the size of any investment is not public. A listing on the Israeli database Startupim has been reported as showing $8.35 million raised over three rounds, including an April 2022 equity crowdfunding round; the profile could not be opened for this article, and no second source confirms the figures.

Armenta does not appear in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all pages for this article, which is consistent with a grant-only award. CORDIS shows no other EU-funded project for the company.

Why Europe Should Care

The EU's Farm to Fork strategy aims to halve sales of antimicrobials for farmed animals and aquaculture by 2030, and since 28 January 2022 the EU regulation on veterinary medicines has banned the preventive use of antimicrobials in groups of animals, according to the European Commission and the European Environment Agency. For mastitis, antibiotics are still the standard treatment, as the CORDIS summary notes, so a working non-drug alternative fits squarely into that policy. The same summary puts European losses from the disease at up to €2.4 billion a year.

The Verdict

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