From EIC Accelerator Grant to Profit: Hafnium Labs' Chemical Data

Every chemical plant, battery electrolyte and drug formulation is designed with numbers that describe how substances behave: boiling points, densities, vapour pressures, how two liquids mix. For most chemicals nobody has measured them. Hafnium Labs, a Copenhagen software company, sells a tool called Q-props that estimates those numbers from computer models and whatever experimental data exist, and says how far each estimate can be trusted.

In the European Commission's list of winners of the 5 June 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 pilot of today's EIC Accelerator, Hafnium Labs of København K appears as the only company behind the project "Faster and smarter chemical R&D with accurate physical property predictions". The EU contributed €1,555,750 to a €2,222,500 project. The company told the EU it aimed for "sales of €50m and EBITDA of €16m in 2025". Its 2025 accounts show a gross profit of DKK 4.29 million and five employees.

Where Hafnium Labs Stands Now

Hafnium Labs is active. It filed its 2025 annual report on 2 July 2026, and the Danish register shows the company with status "active", six employees and four full-time equivalents in July 2026, according to ownr, which reproduces the official CVR data, and the filings on the Danish Business Authority's distribution service. The Q-props login portal carries a 2026 copyright, and the company website still describes software that supplies "reliable physical property data for molecules and mixtures" to the chemicals, energy and pharmaceutical industries. No customer, product release or press announcement from 2024 to 2026 could be found.

The company is owned by its two directors. Holding companies of Bjørn Maribo-Mogensen and Jon Rune Christensen each hold between 33.34% and 49.99%, and no other owner is registered. Registered share capital has stayed at DKK 50,000 since 2018. Hafnium Labs does not appear in any of the 16 pages of the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which fits its grant-only award.

The Technology: Better Inputs for Process Simulators

Chemical engineers design plants in process simulators such as Aspen Plus, which calculate how streams of material behave. The simulators rely on thermodynamic models fitted to measured data, and "experts estimate that we have experimental physical property data for less than 0.2% of relevant chemical systems", the company wrote in its final CORDIS report. Most of what exists is for petrochemicals; there is "almost no data for biochemicals, carbon capture molecules, electrolytes" and other chemistries needed for the green transition.

Q-props combines quantum chemistry, molecular simulation and machine learning with experimental data, picks the model that fits a given chemistry, and attaches an uncertainty to each prediction. It plugs into process simulators through the CAPE-OPEN interface standard, either as a check on stream properties or as a replacement for a simulator's own thermodynamics, according to a 2020 presentation to the CAPE-OPEN Laboratories Network, which also says the back end is written in the Julia language. CHEManager reported in December 2020 that the founders' starting point was a student project modelling the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion, and quoted the company: "process simulators are only as accurate as the physical properties you put into them. It really is 'garbage in, garbage out'."

The CORDIS objective claims predictions ">10 times more accurate than current state-of-the-art models". No independent benchmark or peer-reviewed comparison of Q-props against standard property methods could be found, so the claim could not be verified.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The grant agreement was signed on 17 December 2019, and the project ran from 1 January 2020 to 30 September 2022. At the start, Q-props was a prototype at technology readiness level 6 running on Hafnium Labs' own cloud, and the company said it had used it in "three contracted projects with large customers" and held five letters of support. The project had three goals: let customers run Q-props on their own cloud for confidentiality, make it easier to use customers' own data, and make the software usable by chemists and engineers without modelling expertise.

The final report says "work progressed according to plan". A customer-side version was built in the first period; the second went into demonstration projects with industrial partners, whom the report does not name. Q-props was split into five tools: Q-predict for pure compounds, Q-model for tuning thermodynamic models, Q-package for process simulators, Q-twin and Q-utility for custom web apps, and Q-screen for finding compounds with target properties. The report says the workforce grew by more than 100% during the project and that Q-props was "now ready for deployment".

1. Q-props deployable on customers' own cloudDeliveredCustomer-side version reported complete in the CORDIS report.
2. Easier use of customers' own dataDeliveredData integration tools and a product suite reported; the Q-props portal is online in 2026.
3. Usable by non-specialistsUnverifiedClaimed by the company; no named users or independent review found.
4. €50M sales and €16M EBITDA in 2025Not achieved2025 gross profit DKK 4.29M; pre-tax loss DKK 67,778.

The technical work was delivered on time by the company's own account, and the software is still online four years later. The commercial plan was not: against a €50 million sales target for 2025, the accounts show a gross profit of DKK 4.29 million. The demonstration partners and customers are not named anywhere in public.

What Hafnium Labs Has Achieved Since the Award

Before the EIC award, Hafnium Labs had been picked for the seventh intake of Merck's accelerator in Darmstadt, ten start-ups chosen from 565 applications, according to Bionity in January 2019. The Quantum Insider lists that as an undisclosed seed round in 2019 and the EIC money as a "€1.6 million grant".

The company's next public grant was European again. From October 2021 to October 2023 its subsidiary Hafnium Labs Q-props ApS coordinated AutoReactPro, a Eurostars project with the modelling software firm SCM (Software for Chemistry & Materials) to predict unwanted side reactions in chemical plant design, according to SCM and the ERA-LEARN project register. The partners estimated "€750m/yr in value and 100 Mt/yr CO2 savings" for the industry. No result of the project has been published. CORDIS lists no other EU project for Hafnium Labs.

Sources disagree on the company's origins and its money. CHEManager and The Quantum Insider date the founding to 2016, and CO-LaN admitted Hafnium Labs as a member in September 2016, but the limited company Hafnium Labs ApS was incorporated on 20 March 2018. The Quantum Insider names a third founder, Rasmus Lundsgaard, who is not a registered owner or director. CHEManager wrote in 2020 that the company had raised "over €2 million by 2019" and that "nearly €3 million" had been invested by 2020. The register shows no increase in share capital, so that money did not come in as new equity in Hafnium Labs ApS; how much of it was grants could not be verified.

The Money

The parent company reported a net profit in every year from 2019 to 2025 except 2023, when it lost DKK 1,090,013 and management called the result "not satisfactory". Gross profit, the only top-line figure the company files, rose from DKK 294,803 in 2019 to DKK 3.96 million in 2020, the first year of the EIC project, and was DKK 4,293,019 in 2025. The accounts do not separate software sales, consulting and grants.

The profits are small. In 2025 the company made a pre-tax loss of DKK 67,778 and a net profit of DKK 112,720 after a tax income, on staff costs of DKK 4.32 million. Equity grew from DKK 292,019 at the end of 2018 to DKK 3,554,881 at the end of 2025, entirely from retained results. Cash was DKK 657,816 at the end of 2025. The Q-props subsidiary had no staff costs in 2024 or 2025 and lost DKK 288,178 and DKK 35,523 in those years, according to its register profile and filings.

Why Europe Should Care

Europe's chemical industry is under pressure from energy prices and competition, and on 8 July 2025 the Commission adopted a Chemicals Industry Action Plan to make the sector more competitive, resilient and sustainable. Designing new processes for bio-based feedstocks, carbon capture and battery chemistries means working with substances that have never been measured, which is the gap Q-props targets. A European supplier of property data that plugs into the open CAPE-OPEN standard is a small contribution to that plan's aims.

The Verdict

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