Counting Celeroton's EIC Accelerator Fuel Cell Compressor Results

A fuel cell car needs two things to make electricity: hydrogen from a tank and oxygen from the air, pushed into the stack by a compressor. Celeroton, a 2008 spin-off of ETH Zurich's power electronics laboratory, builds that compressor small: an electric turbo machine whose shaft floats on a film of air instead of oiled ball bearings. In the European Commission's January 2019 round of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, it won a grant of €1,728,125 for Turbo-FCell, a €2,468,750 project to cut the compressor's production cost and test it for the road, according to CORDIS and the company's announcement of 23 May 2019.

The project ended in November 2021 with its objectives met, according to its final report, and a new compressor, the CT-2000, followed in May 2022. What the record does not show is the commercial half of the plan: 18,500 units and more than €93 million of cumulative revenue by 2025. Celeroton, a privately held Swiss company that does not publish accounts, has disclosed no sales figures. In 2024 it moved the whole fuel cell business into a new subsidiary.

Where Celeroton Stands Now

Celeroton AG is active. The Swiss commercial register lists it as existing, with a capital increase to CHF 180,323 registered in June 2025, according to Zefix and OnlineInfo. Its newsroom carried new product launches in 2025 and 2026, among them gas-bearing compressors for helium, hydrogen and oxygen, and articles on cryogenics, space cooling and industrial vapour recompression as recently as September 2026.

The fuel cell compressors no longer sit in Celeroton AG. On 1 July 2024 the company announced Celeroton TurboCell AG, a subsidiary "taking over all air compressor for fuel cell activities and products", with Alexandre Gabella as chief executive and Markus Brandstätter as chief technology officer. The register shows it was founded on 4 April 2024 with CHF 100,000 of capital, and that its capital rose to CHF 154,127.20 in August 2024, when Martin Grosstesner, an Austrian resident, joined the board, according to the TurboCell register entry. Who subscribed the new shares, and how much of TurboCell Celeroton AG still owns, is not public. On 2 October 2026 the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce recorded that Gabella's signing authority had lapsed; who now runs TurboCell has not been announced.

The Technology: An Air Compressor That Floats

Compressors in fuel cell systems feed the stack with air under pressure, and they are driven by the fuel cell's own electricity, cutting its output by 10 to 20%, according to a 2020 article published by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. Most automotive compressors run at standard speeds on lubricated bearings. Celeroton's run at several hundred thousand revolutions per minute on gas bearings, so no oil can reach the stack, where contamination can cut its life to as little as 20,000 km, the project's final report says. Higher speed lets the machine shrink: Celeroton claimed it is "20 times lighter and smaller" than the state of the art.

The company's own figures for its top speed vary. Its 2017 Phase 1 summary on CORDIS gave 300,000 rpm; the 2019 Phase 2 objective and the Federal Office of Energy article give 280,000 rpm. The speed itself comes from a laboratory record: in 2008 Zwyssig's ETH drive passed one million revolutions per minute, ETH Zurich reported at the time, in a release reprinted by idw that also named Zwyssig and Bartholet as founders of the spin-off.

What Turbo-FCell Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The European Commission's list of EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 winners names Celeroton AG of Volketswil, and CORDIS lists it as the project's only beneficiary. It was the company's second EU award for the same idea: a €50,000 Phase 1 feasibility study, Turbo-FuelCell, ran from December 2017 to March 2018. Celeroton had also worked since 2017 on INN-BALANCE, a fuel cell research project with Volvo Cars, PowerCell, AVL and Brose under the EU's Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, with its share funded by the Swiss state, according to CORDIS and the company.

Turbo-FCell had two technical aims, cutting manufacturing cost and completing testing for vehicle use, and the final report claims both. All four planned tests (condensation, particles, temperature and pressure, vibration) were run, plus four tests added after the proposal. The team selected a new rotor and motor concept, a cast spiral casing and a cheaper impeller, built and tested a redesigned prototype, and filed two patents. One cost-cutting task, on the casing, was stopped early for "very low potential". The project needed a six-month extension, and all deliverables and milestones were then handed in "according to the schedule", the report says.

1. Vehicle-grade testingDeliveredFour planned and four added tests completed, per the CORDIS report.
2. Lower manufacturing costDeliveredNew rotor, motor, cast casing and impeller verified; casing task dropped early. No cost figure published.
3. Redesigned compressor on the marketDeliveredCT-2000/CC-2000 launched May 2022, 40% lighter and smaller than its predecessor.
4. On timeLateSix-month extension to 30 November 2021.
5. 18,500 units and €93M revenue by 2025Not achievedNo unit, revenue or EBITDA figure has been published by the company or anyone else.

The product the project prepared did reach the market. In May 2022 Celeroton launched the CT-2000 compressor and CC-2000 converter for fuel cells of 30 to 60 kW in light commercial vehicles and forklifts, with 40% less weight and volume, 10% more output and a 13% higher top speed than its predecessor, and savings in material, machining and assembly. Automotive Powertrain Technology International and Hydrogen Central reported the launch. Neither the company nor the trade press links the CT-2000 to Turbo-FCell by name, but the timing matches the CORDIS summary, which expected the next-generation compressor to launch in 2022. TurboCell's catalogue now lists ten compressors from 1.5 kW to 25 kW, including the CT-2000 and two models with an energy-recovering expander.

Customers, Staff and Money Since the Award

The named users of Celeroton fuel cell hardware date mostly from before or around the award. The Federal Office of Energy article of 2020 says its CC-550-7500 converter ran in a hydrogen version of the Businova bus by the French firm Safra, in a fuel cell system from Symbio; that it supplied the compressor for a range extender by Swiss Hydrogen; and that one of its compressors had powered a passenger boat in La Rochelle since 2017. It also mentioned a project with an unnamed company planning a fleet of small hydrogen trucks from 2021; no result of that project has been published. No customer for the CT-2000 has been named. In 2020 Bartholet told the Federal Office of Energy that Celeroton, until two years earlier seen as a prototype and engineering firm, was becoming "a producing SME" that builds compressors in series (translated).

The company grew in that period. Celeroton put its staff at 10 in 2012 and 20 in 2014, the Federal Office of Energy article counted 38 in 2020, and in its 15-year history the company said it passed 80 employees in 2023, the year it set up a dedicated fuel cell business unit. The 2023 figure comes only from the company.

Celeroton has no disclosed venture rounds; as a Swiss AG it does not have to publish its accounts, so revenue, profit and equity could not be verified. The register shows new money: a capital increase in March 2023, which included converting CHF 699,871.20 of debt into 3,280 shares, and another in May 2025. Public support came as debt guarantees rather than equity. The federal Technology Fund lists both Celeroton AG and Celeroton TurboCell AG in its portfolio; Startupticker dates Celeroton's guarantee to 2020, and mainsights reported TurboCell's admission in April 2026. The guarantee amounts are not public. Celeroton is not listed among the EIC Fund's investments; its 2019 award was grant only.

Why Europe Should Care

The air compressor is one of the parts that decide whether a fuel cell system is efficient and affordable, and the project's final report noted that the main compressor makers were in Asia and the United States. The Commission's hydrogen strategy of July 2020 counts transport among the uses it wants hydrogen to decarbonise, which makes a European source of such components relevant to supply chains. Switzerland is not an EU member, but Swiss organisations can again take part in Horizon Europe as full beneficiaries from the 2025 calls, according to the Swiss National Science Foundation.

The market Celeroton bet on has moved slowly. The Federal Office of Energy article noted in 2020 that hydrogen's share of future mobility could not be reliably predicted, that the technology still had to get cheaper and that a network of filling stations was indispensable; Celeroton was betting on light and heavy commercial fleets that refuel at a central depot. Its newsroom since 2024 shows Celeroton AG putting its gas-bearing machines into hydrogen liquefaction, cryogenics, helium recirculation and space cooling, while the fuel cell line has its own company.

The Verdict

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