Cerabyte and the EIC Accelerator: Storing Data in Ceramic for Ever

Cerabyte, the brand of the Ceramic Data Solutions group with a company in Munich and research in Vienna, stores "cold" data, which is rarely read and never changed, by using lasers to burn nanometre-scale patterns into ceramic layers on glass tablets, which robots shelve and retrieve for reading by microscope. Its EIC Accelerator project, awarded to Cerabyte GmbH, "a ceramic data storage system for global IT and cloud service providers", receives an EU contribution of €2,499,999 and runs from December 2024 to September 2026, according to CORDIS. It was to demonstrate the technology and validate it in an operational environment, at a living lab or a customer site.

After the first year, the report lists component milestones: a compact laser writer co-developed with an industrial partner, writing 500-nanometre features; a robotic rack holding more than 1,100 cartridges; a precision stage with a 250-millisecond line time; and an autofocus module heading for integration, according to CORDIS. It says density rose fourfold, read and write speed about eightfold, access time halved and the sales pipeline grew by a factor of 2.3. Validation at a customer site is not reported. In October 2025 Cerabyte showed early-access product samples at the OCP Global Summit, according to StorageNewsletter.

Where Cerabyte Stands Now

Cerabyte has lined up three US strategic investors. Pure Storage invested in July 2024, according to a Cerabyte release. In March 2025 In-Q-Tel, which invests for the US national security community, backed its work on storage for government and military customers, according to GovCon Exec. In May 2025 the hard-drive maker Western Digital made a strategic investment, according to a Cerabyte release. The amounts were not disclosed, and the group's accounts were not accessible in free sources.

The Technology: Laser Dots on Glass

Hard drives and tape must be powered or refreshed and replaced every three to five years, the EIC report says. Cerabyte's tablets need no power once written. Lasers write QR-code-like patterns in parallel; a microscope reads them back. The company claims savings of up to 99% in energy and 95% in total cost of ownership; those figures are projections, not measured results.

What the EIC Award Promised, and What the Record Shows

The project ends on 30 September 2026. The public report covers the first year and describes subsystems being built and tested separately, with system-level validation still planned. Customer-site validation, the core deliverable, has not been announced. Until a final report is published, delivery cannot be judged.

1. Laser writer moduleDelivered500 nm features.
2. Robotic library and handlerIn testingUnit tests passed.
3. Integrated demonstratorUnverifiedSamples shown 2025.
4. Customer-site validationNot announcedNo report.

The Money

The award was blended finance; no EIC Fund investment has been announced. Cerabyte's backers are strategic: two storage companies and In-Q-Tel. No round size has been disclosed.

What Cannot Be Checked

Why Europe Should Care

Data centres' energy use is a European policy issue, and cold data makes up most stored data, the report says. A European archive technology would give data centres a low-energy option. Its main backers so far are American storage companies.

The Verdict

Cerabyte and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.