Glassomer and the EIC Accelerator: Glass Moulded Like Plastic

Glass is shaped the way it was centuries ago: melted at high temperature, ground, or etched with aggressive chemicals. Glassomer, a spin-off of researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Freiburg, shapes it like plastic. Its feedstock is a polymer filled with tiny silica particles. The part is injection moulded or 3D printed, the polymer is washed out, and the remaining "sandcastle", as co-founder Bastian Rapp calls it, is sintered in an oven into pure fused silica, according to a CORDIS results article.

The European Commission's list of companies selected at the 7 October 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot names Glassomer, of Freiburg im Breisgau, with blended finance, a grant plus EIC equity, for "Glassomer - A Revolution in Glass Processing". No other company is listed for the project. The grant, €2,469,093.38 towards a total cost of €3,527,276.25, ran from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2025, according to CORDIS. Glassomer appears in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, and its portfolio page gives no amount or date for the investment.

Where Glassomer Stands Now

Glassomer GmbH is an active company in the Freiburg commercial register, with no insolvency or liquidation entry, according to North Data and online-handelsregister.de. Bastian Rapp, the founding managing director, has run it since July 2021 together with Dorothea Helmer and Frederik Kotz-Helmer, both co-authors of the research behind the company. Its latest filed balance sheet, for 2023, was published on 31 January 2025, North Data shows; the figures sit behind a paywall and could not be checked for this article.

Recent signs of activity are public. In January 2026 the company exhibited at SPIE Photonics West on the German Pavilion, offering lenses, ferrules, fibre components, microfluidic chips and lab parts in quantities from prototypes and small batches to high-volume production. It also has an exhibitor listing for MedtecLIVE 2026, where it calls itself a "world leading manufacturer of injection molded glass parts". In November 2025 the University of Freiburg's research institute FRIAS held a workshop on using the process to restore historic glass, with a tour of the Glassomer lab. North Data records a new German federal grant of €369,149 from November 2025 for powderLAS, a project to make glass-ceramic cooktops from recycled lithium aluminosilicate, and a patent publication in September 2026.

The company's own news page has not been updated since November 2023.

The Technology: Fused Silica Without the Furnace Melt

High-purity quartz glass melts at about 1,800 °C, which makes shaping it energy-intensive, the University of Freiburg notes. Glassomer's granulate is injection moulded at about 130 °C on ordinary plastics machines, and the moulded parts are then debound and sintered into fused silica that needs no polishing, according to a report on the 2021 Science paper in which the team described the process. The earlier printing method was published in Nature in April 2017 by a team led by Rapp at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, with Kotz and Helmer among the authors.

The established alternatives are melting and moulding, grinding and polishing, or etching. Rapp told CORDIS that grinding turns most of the glass into sludge, and that Glassomer's electric ovens can run on renewable power where traditional glassmaking uses natural gas. How much energy the process saves is told differently in each source.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project aimed to take the Glassomer technology "from the level of operational prototypes to complete and qualified systems in target markets", first with a laboratory line and then with a pilot production line, according to the final periodic report. The proposal summary on CORDIS named first orders from Zeiss, BASF, Heinz Glass, Chanel, AAC and Molex, and three target markets: optics and photonics, smartphone lenses and lab-on-a-chip.

The final report says all of this was done. In January 2023 the injection moulding machine maker ENGEL announced a cooperation, supplying an all-electric moulding machine with a cleanroom robot for joint development and customer orders; it said first sample inspections for series production were under way on Glassomer's new production floors. By 2025 the company had access to three large injection moulding machines, Rapp told CORDIS. The report also names an ISO 9001 certified quality system, 24 patents in 4 families and pilot projects for lenses, packaging, nozzles, jewellery and labware, and it ends: "The project ended successfully with a large-scale industrial order for serial production."

1. Laboratory production lineDeliveredMoulding line and cleanroom described in the CORDIS report.
2. Pilot production lineDeliveredENGEL machine and production floor, per ENGEL; three machines by 2025.
3. Quality system and patentsReportedISO 9001 and 24 patents in 4 families, per the company's CORDIS report.
4. Pilot projects with customersDeliveredSeries of "6 to 7 figure" parts, per the University of Freiburg, 2023.
5. Serial production orderUnnamedClaimed in the final report; customer and volume not disclosed.

The project ran four years and closed on schedule according to the CORDIS dates. Most of the evidence comes from the company's own report; the ENGEL release and the University of Freiburg award text support the production line and part series. No customer named in the proposal has confirmed an order in public, and no smartphone lens produced with the process has been announced.

What Glassomer Has Achieved Since the Award

The company has collected awards: the Laser World of Photonics innovation award and a "Coup de Coeur" at 3D Print Lyon in April 2022, and the special prize of the Umwelttechnikpreis Baden-Württemberg in October 2023, according to its news page and the University of Freiburg. The university wrote that the granulate is made from glass particles left over from glass fibre production.

It has also kept winning public research money. North Data lists three German federal grants since 2023: €387,354 for AMglass4EOS from April 2023, €347,027 for printing quartz glass for photonics and microfluidics from August 2024, and the €369,149 powderLAS project. Its registered share capital rose from €25,000 to €27,680 in a filing published on 4 January 2024, after new articles of association in December 2023, North Data shows. Whether that capital increase is linked to the EIC Fund investment is not public. No private funding round has been announced.

The team grew from "a start-up with a few founding members to employing around 20 people", Rapp told CORDIS in October 2025. The company's team page says 18. Revenue has not been published.

Why Europe Should Care

On 26 February 2025 the Commission presented its Clean Industrial Deal, which focuses on energy-intensive industries and clean technology. Glassmaking is one of those industries, and a process that shapes fused silica at 130 °C before an electric sintering step is the kind of change the deal is meant to encourage. A year earlier, the Commission's communication on Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership called advanced materials crucial to the EU's resilience and "open strategic autonomy".

Fused silica components go into optics, fibre connectors, lab equipment and solar technology. A European supplier that can mould them in volume would shorten a supply chain that today relies on grinding and etching. Whether Glassomer can do that at a scale that matters is the open question.

The Verdict

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