What Became of In Ovo's EIC Accelerator Egg Sexing Machine

The website of In Ovo now shows a single line: "So long, and thanks for all the eggs!" The holding page at inovo.nl is the last public statement of a Leiden company that spent twelve years trying to end one of the egg industry's oldest practices, the killing of male chicks on the day they hatch. In March 2020 the European Innovation Council selected In Ovo in the EIC Accelerator pilot, and the EU paid €2,464,205.63 towards InOvotive, a €3,520,293.75 project to turn a laboratory prototype into an automated machine that sexes eggs before they hatch, according to CORDIS.

The machine, called Ella, was built and went into commercial hatcheries in the Netherlands and Belgium. The company then raised a €34 million Series B and signed a €40 million venture debt facility with the European Investment Bank. Yet by December 2025 In Ovo Holding B.V., its operating company In Ovo B.V. and its Belgian subsidiary had all been dissolved or liquidated, according to Dutch and Belgian register data. What happened in between is only partly public.

Where In Ovo Stands Now

In Ovo no longer exists as a company. Dutch Chamber of Commerce data, as reproduced by BedrijvenMonitor, show that In Ovo B.V. (KvK 82024561), the operating company founded in February 2021 that employed 43 people in September 2023, was deregistered on 9 October 2025. Ella Innovations B.V., a third group company, followed on 11 December 2025, and the parent In Ovo Holding B.V., the EU grant holder, on 12 December 2025. The register gives the reason as "opgeheven", dissolved. North Data lists both Dutch companies as terminated.

The Belgian subsidiary went first. In Ovo Belgium, registered in Antwerp on 21 June 2023, has been closed since 18 September 2025 after its liquidation was completed, according to the Belgian Crossroads Bank for Enterprises, and North Data records closing accounts for the year ending on that date. In September 2026 AgFunderNews reported that In Ovo "has since exited the market". A search of faillissementsdossier.nl, which tracks Dutch bankruptcy publications, returned no insolvency file for In Ovo. Why the company stopped, what happened to its machines, patents and customers, and whether anyone took over the technology could not be verified.

The Technology: A Drop of Egg Fluid on Day Nine

About 6.5 billion male chicks of laying breeds are killed worldwide each year because they lay no eggs and grow too slowly for meat, according to the project's CORDIS report. In Ovo's answer was a test on the ninth of the 21 days of incubation. Ella punches a tiny hole in the shell, draws a drop of allantoic fluid, closes the hole and passes the sample to a SCIEX Echo mass spectrometer, which measures a sex-linked biomarker in about a second, the CORDIS results article says. Male eggs are taken out and the incubation trays refilled with female eggs. The company identified the biomarker in 2016, according to CORDIS, and kept working closely with Leiden University's Academic Centre for Drug Research, according to Leiden University. The engineering firm Demcon automated the egg handling, sampling and sorting.

The approach competed with several others. A September 2026 AgFunderNews overview lists hyperspectral imaging by AAT's Cheggy at around days 11 to 13 for brown eggs only, MRI scanning by Orbem at day 11 or 12, DNA testing of egg fluid by HatchTech's SelEggt at day nine, and in-incubator imaging by Omegga by the end of day six. In Ovo argued that its mass spectrometry worked on white and brown breeds and could switch to other biomarkers, including earlier ones, according to CORDIS.

What InOvotive Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

InOvotive ran from 1 June 2020 to 31 May 2022. Its objective on CORDIS was concrete: the Alpha prototype screened 1,800 eggs an hour with 95% accuracy, and the project would scale it to "the required throughput defined by the sector: 10,000 eggs per hour", so that hatcheries could process their whole capacity in line.

The final report describes a project that largely did what it set out to do in engineering terms. An upgraded prototype was tested at an independent commercial hatchery in the Netherlands, hens hatched in the tests were sold and reared, and rearing farm data showed no difference in chicken quality or egg output. A demonstration machine that handles standard trays, samples and sorts eggs and refills trays was built and placed at the partner hatchery. The report says the KPIs for the whole process were validated, two customer contracts and two letters of intent were signed, and the team grew from nine to 29 people. It does not give the throughput or accuracy the finished machine reached. Demcon speaks only of "thousands of eggs per hour".

1. Automated in-line machine at a commercial hatcheryDeliveredDemonstration machine placed at the partner hatchery, per the CORDIS report; running in line in a Dutch hatchery in late 2022, per CORDIS.
2. Throughput of 10,000 eggs per hourNot shownNo throughput figure for the finished machine has been published by In Ovo, the EU or Demcon.
3. First paying customersDeliveredTwo contracts and two letters of intent by May 2022; Het Anker and Vepymo named in the trade press.
4. Earlier sexing, towards day sixStarted onlyStill being tested in November 2023, per the EIB; no day-six product announced.
5. Ten machines in hatcheries by the end of 2024Not announcedThree machines in November 2023; no later count published before the company closed.

The award was grant only, so no EIC equity was involved. In Ovo does not appear among the 326 companies on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked on all its pages on 14 October 2026. The Commission's list of the March 2020 winners names the company as "IN OVO BV" with inovo.nl and no partner companies for the project; CORDIS lists the same entity under its later name, In Ovo Holding B.V. Before the EIC award, CORDIS shows two smaller EU grants to the company: EGGR, €131,825 in 2017 and 2018 for egg-based bioreactors, and EVE, €50,000 in 2018 and 2019 for a sensor platform to monitor the hatching process.

What In Ovo Achieved After the Award

The commercial start was quick. The hatchery Het Anker in Ochten used Ella from December 2020, and by March 2021 In Ovo had hatched 150,000 chicks without culling, with the egg traders G. Kwetters & Zn., Interovo Egg Group and Gebr. Van Beek committed to the technology, AgFunderNews reported. The machine then in use could supply 1 million cull-free hens a year, and a new one was to handle 5 million. In February 2023 the hatchery Vepymo in Poppel, in which Hendrix Genetics holds a stake, chose Ella and planned its first hens with it from summer 2023, according to Pluimveeweb. By November 2023 three machines were running in hatcheries in the Netherlands and Belgium, said the EIB.

The money followed. In March 2022 In Ovo closed a €34 million Series B led by the European Circular Bioeconomy Fund, with financing from ABN AMRO and money from Evonik, VisVires New Protein, Demcon and Leiden University's Libertatis Ergo Holding, according to Leiden University and Silicon Canals. In November 2023 the EIB announced a €40 million loan backed by InvestEU for 2023 to 2026, to improve Ella, roll out more machines and develop Eve, the hatching sensor platform. AgFunderNews wrote in 2026 that it is "unclear how much of the latter was ultimately drawn".

The team grew with it. Register filings show one person at the holding in November 2018, nine in September 2020 and 23 in June 2022, and 43 at the operating company in September 2023. The CORDIS report gives 29 people at the end of the project in May 2022, a figure that does not match the register's 23 for the holding a month later; the difference could not be resolved from public sources. In December 2024 co-founder Wouter Bruins stepped down as chief executive, Anouk ter Laak took over and Judith Batchelar became chair, Silicon Canals reported; the Belgian register confirms ter Laak as the subsidiary's representative from 1 November 2024. Less than a year later the liquidation of the Belgian subsidiary had been closed.

Why Europe Should Care

Ending the systematic killing of male chicks is now part of EU policy. The Commission's Livestock Strategy of July 2026 lists it under the planned revision of poultry welfare rules, with a proposal due by the end of 2026, as part of the animal welfare overhaul promised in the Farm to Fork Strategy, according to the European Commission. Several countries moved first: Germany bans chick killing and, under section 4c of its Animal Welfare Act, bars sexing procedures that kill the embryo from day 13 of incubation. In 2023 the German Animal Welfare Federation criticised the move of that limit from day 7 to day 13, a change that left In Ovo's day-nine test within the German limit. The Dutch government set a goal of ending chick culling for eggs sold in the Netherlands by 2026, Innovate Animal Ag reported.

The market In Ovo helped open is growing without it. In-ovo sexing has reached about 40% market penetration in the EU in five years, according to Innovate Animal Ag figures cited by AgFunderNews, which names Orbem, AAT and SelEggt among the suppliers. In Ovo, backed by an EIC grant, a Series B and EIB debt, had its first machine in a commercial hatchery in December 2020; it did not last to see the EU rules now being drafted.

The Verdict

In Ovo's former managers and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.