Kastus Turned an EIC Accelerator Grant Into Anti-Soiling Glass

In June 2020, three months into the pandemic, the European Commission picked a Dublin company that promised to make touchscreens kill the coronavirus. Kastus, a spin-out of what is now TU Dublin, sprays a light-activated layer onto glass while the glass is made. The EIC Accelerator pilot gave it €1,609,166 for a project called SPYGLASS, according to CORDIS. The pitch was antimicrobial glass for touchscreens and devices, with forecast revenue "of over €42m" in 2025.

Six years later Kastus is still trading, but its homepage now sells something else: a "permanent anti-soiling surface solution for solar panels", according to kastus.com. In July 2026 the Italian module maker FuturaSun launched a panel series whose front glass carries the Kastus layer, with sales planned from the fourth quarter of 2026, according to pv magazine and PV Tech. The chemistry is the same as in 2020. The market is not.

Where Kastus Stands Now

Kastus Technologies Designated Activity Company is registered as "Normal" at the Irish Companies Registration Office, has filed its annual returns up to 30 September 2025 and has accounts to 31 December 2024 on file, according to the CRO open data register and OpenCorporates. The filings show a change of registered office in December 2025 and a change of director or secretary in July 2026. The accounts themselves are not freely available, so revenue, losses, equity and staff could not be verified. Two sister companies, Kastus Paints Limited and Kastus AM Limited, were dissolved on 1 January 2020; a holding company, Kastus Holdings DAC (CRO 588960), is still registered.

The company has pivoted its lead product from antimicrobial touch surfaces to solar glass. It launched an anti-soiling treatment for solar panels at Intersolar Europe on 19 June 2024, with chief executive John Browne saying "we are actively seeking early adopters", according to a company release. Its three most recent news posts all concern solar: a stand at the SNEC trade fair in Shanghai in June 2025 and a meeting with the Chinese module maker LONGi in Jiaxing, arranged by Enterprise Ireland, in September 2025, according to Kastus. No agreement with LONGi has been announced. Antimicrobial coatings now appear on the homepage only as a secondary field.

Kastus is not in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which had 320 entries across 16 pages when it was checked for this article. That matches the award: SPYGLASS was a grant-only award with no equity component.

The Technology: Glass That Cleans Itself in Light

The Kastus layer is a photocatalyst. When light falls on the coated surface, it reacts with moisture in the air to form reactive oxygen species, which attack micro-organisms on the surface, according to the project's CORDIS report. The same surface is hydrophilic: water spreads into a film instead of beading. The coating is sprayed onto glass or ceramic surfaces during manufacturing, the report says, so it is part of the finished glass rather than a film added later.

The research came from the Centre for Research in Engineering Surface Technology (CREST) at TU Dublin, from which Kastus licensed the technology through the university's Hothouse incubator, according to Knowledge Transfer Ireland and TU Dublin. pv magazine adds Trinity College Dublin as a second research origin. In 2018 two researchers, one from the AMBER materials centre and one from Trinity's School of Physics, joined Kastus in a €280,000 research programme under Science Foundation Ireland's industry fellowships, according to AMBER.

On a solar panel, the two properties do different work. Photocatalysis breaks down organic dirt such as bird droppings, biofilm and moss, and the hydrophilic surface lets rain wash dust away, according to pv magazine. The usual remedy for dirty panels is cleaning; pv magazine notes that the Kastus layer is built into the front glass rather than applied as a coating afterwards. Kastus says it lasts the life of the panel, needs no reapplication, reduces the need for chemical cleaning and pays for itself within about 18 months, according to its launch release. None of these figures has been independently published.

What SPYGLASS Promised, and What the Record Shows

The European Commission's list of selected companies names "KASTUS TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED", Dublin, with SPYGLASS, grant only, among the projects of the 20 March 2020 cut-off "selected COVID19-related projects". No other beneficiary is listed for the project. Kastus was one of 36 companies picked for their contribution to the fight against the coronavirus, according to Knowledge Transfer Ireland; the company's own announcement said the €166 million package went to 36 companies, five of them Irish. The objective on CORDIS says Kastus had won a Seal of Excellence for an earlier SME Instrument application in July 2019.

The grant agreement was signed on 17 July 2020, and the project ran from 1 August 2020 to 31 July 2022, on a total budget of €2,873,511.25. The objective set three aims: take the glass formulation from technology readiness level 8 to 9, put it into full production, and expand into "the entire touchscreen and glass AM sectors", building a company with revenue of over €42 million in 2025, according to CORDIS.

The final report, for August 2021 to July 2022, is short. It says Kastus "scaled up the formulation and then focused on our own products", ran antimicrobial tests on them, employed more staff and was "now in the process of commercialization". It shows packaging for Kastus screen protectors but gives no sales, customer or staff numbers, according to the CORDIS reporting page. Only this second-period report is published.

The products did reach the market, partly before the grant started. ZAGG's InvisibleShield brand announced at CES on 6 January 2020 that its screen protectors would use Kastus technology, according to iMore. In August 2020 ZAGG said all its antimicrobial glass protectors made from 2020 would carry it, with a footnote narrowing the coronavirus claim to tests showing it kills "up to 95% of human coronavirus after 30 minutes", according to the ZAGG release. Kastus launched its own tempered-glass protectors for commercial touchscreens from 4 to 34 inches on 1 September 2020, according to AVNetwork, and in December 2020 Lenovo agreed to sell Kastus protectors for screens up to 31 inches and a line of screens with the coating built in, according to Digital Signage Today. By June 2021 Kastus said it had made "tens of thousands of products" and named Lenovo, Lavazza Pro and Kone as partners, according to TechCentral.

1. Multifunctional antimicrobial glass coatingDeliveredCoated protectors sold by ZAGG, Lenovo and Kastus from 2020.
2. Full production at TRL 9PartlyFormulation scaled up; "tens of thousands of products" by 2021, per the company. No volumes since.
3. Expansion across touchscreen and glass marketsPartlyPartners named in 2021; no new antimicrobial customer announced after 2021.
4. Revenue of over €42M in 2025Not achievedNo revenue figure published; accounts not freely available.

CORDIS lists the project as closed at its planned end date of 31 July 2022. Its main product line, however, is no longer what Kastus leads with. The antimicrobial screen protector rode a pandemic demand that faded; the 2025 revenue forecast was for that market, and there is no public evidence that it was met.

The Money

Kastus raised €1.5 million in December 2016 in a round led by the Atlantic Bridge University Fund, with Enterprise Ireland and the Singapore-based syndicate Carragh Holdings also backing it, according to the Irish Times and AMBER. In June 2021, ten months into SPYGLASS, it closed a Series A of €5.65 million led by Alpha Ascent Ventures, with Atlantic Bridge, Carragh Holdings and Enterprise Ireland following on, according to TechCentral and the law firm Matheson, which advised on the deal. Tech.eu rounded the figure to €5.6 million. No later round has been announced.

The patent count has grown: 44 patents granted or pending in December 2020 and June 2021, according to Digital Signage Today and TechCentral, and "52 worldwide patents" on the current company website, which also lists ISO 9001 certification.

Why It Matters for Europe

The award was framed around antimicrobial resistance, which causes more than 35,000 deaths a year in the EU and EEA and is the subject of an EU One Health action plan since 2017, according to the European Commission. Kastus's new market sits under a different EU priority: the EU Solar Energy Strategy of May 2022 targets at least 600 GW of solar capacity by 2030, and the European Solar PV Industry Alliance, launched in December 2022, works to keep more of the solar value chain in Europe, according to the Commission's energy directorate. Soiling cost at least 3% to 4% of global PV output in 2018, Kastus says in its Intersolar release, citing the IEA's PV programme. A European supplier of a glass treatment fits the alliance's aims; its first module partner, FuturaSun, makes its modules in China, according to PV Tech.

The Verdict

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