Kayrros's EIC Accelerator Bet on Satellite Energy Data, Revisited

In June 2020, two plumes of methane rose from the Yamal pipeline that carries Siberian gas towards Europe, one of them leaking an estimated 93 tonnes an hour. Nobody on the ground reported them. A Paris company called Kayrros found them in European Space Agency satellite data and told the operator, Gazprom, according to Reuters. Six months earlier Kayrros had started a €5.21 million EU-backed project, PAWES, to build exactly this kind of capability: a database of the world's industrial assets watched from space.

The European Commission selected PAWES in the 5 June 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 pilot that preceded the EIC Accelerator, with Kayrros as the only listed beneficiary. The grant was €2.5 million, according to CORDIS. Seven years later Kayrros no longer exists as an independent company: in May 2026 Safran.AI bought its defence business and the British research firm Energy Aspects bought the rest.

Where Kayrros Stands Now

Kayrros was sold in two steps. First, Safran.AI, the artificial intelligence arm of the French aerospace and defence group, bought Kayrros's defence activities, "the automated processing by artificial intelligence of satellite imagery", according to Linklaters, which advised Safran.AI and dates the deal 19 May 2026. A Safran.AI statement relayed by the French Chamber in Singapore confirmed the purchase. The French business site L'Essentiel de l'Éco reports that the defence division had been separated from the civil energy and climate business and that its systems assess strike damage at military bases and oil sites in the Middle East. No price was disclosed.

Then Energy Aspects, a London-based energy market research firm founded in 2012, completed its purchase of the remaining company on 21 May 2026, according to its completion announcement; the item on Kayrros's website is dated 20 May. The deal had been announced on 12 March 2026, subject to regulatory approval, without financial terms. Bredin Prat, which advised Kayrros and its shareholders, describes the same order: the defence sale first, then the acquisition, according to Le Monde du Droit.

The French register confirms the change of control. A notice published in the BODACC on 13 August 2026 shows KAYRROS as a company with a single shareholder, names Energy Aspects chief executive Fredrik Fosse as president, and records the departure of co-founder Antoine Rostand and of the board, including Cathay Innovation, Bpifrance Investissement and NewSpace Capital. Two capital increases followed, raising nominal share capital to €488,837 in June 2026, per the BODACC. The brand lives on inside Energy Aspects, which still sells Kayrros crude oil inventory, LNG and exploration and production data.

The Technology: Counting Oil Tanks From Orbit

Energy markets run on numbers that arrive late or not at all: how much crude sits in a tank farm, whether a refinery is running, how much gas leaks from a pipeline. Traditional sources are company reports, government statistics and paid surveys. Kayrros's idea, set out in the 2018 Phase 1 project, was to build energy indicators "solely based on publicly available information", in practice satellite images, sensor data and the web, processed by machine learning.

The Phase 2 project went one step further. Kayrros proposed "a highly automated asset-centric database and visualisation platform" that would observe industrial assets worldwide in near real time, and said the platform had already been commercialised in 2019, according to CORDIS. The difference from conventional market data is the source: the measurement comes from the asset itself, seen from space, rather than from what its owner reports.

Methane became the showcase. The ESA-supported Methane Watch service, with Kayrros as prime contractor, combines data from Sentinel-5P, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, Landsat and other instruments and covers "approximately 10 million square kilometres on a typical day", according to ESA, which lists the UN Environment Programme's International Methane Emissions Observatory and BNP Paribas among its users.

What PAWES Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

PAWES ran from 1 December 2019 to 30 November 2021, the 24 months CORDIS records, after the grant agreement was signed on 15 November 2019. It was Kayrros's second EU grant under the same acronym: the 2018 Phase 1 feasibility study, with €50,000 of EU money towards €71,429 of costs, had promised "50 m€ of increased revenues by 2021 and 87 job creations", according to CORDIS. The Phase 2 objective was the asset database and platform, an expansion beyond oil and gas, and "dozens of new jobs" in the EU.

The final periodic report describes an asset database with tools to label and enrich assets, a "bring your own data" function and shareable "collections of assets" that client organisations could import. It says the technology developed under the grant "makes it possible, for the first time, to detect and quantify methane emissions on a global scale and then determine their source", and that the platform was used to track mobility and population density in the Paris region during the COVID-19 crisis. Only the report for the second period is published; no deliverables or publications are listed.

1. Asset-centric database and platformDeliveredDescribed in the final report; sold as Kayrros data products, still marketed by Energy Aspects.
2. Expansion beyond oil and gasDeliveredMethane, wildfire and climate risk, and a defence business valuable enough for Safran.AI to buy.
3. Global methane detectionDeliveredYamal leaks reported by Reuters in 2020; Methane Watch used by UNEP's observatory, per ESA.
4. Dozens of new EU jobsUnverifiedThe register shows 50 to 99 staff in 2024; the 2019 headcount is not public.
5. €50M extra revenue by 2021 (Phase 1 forecast)Not announcedNo revenue figure has been published by Kayrros or a third party.

On what the Phase 2 grant actually paid for, the record is clear: the platform exists, it was sold and it now belongs to a larger firm. The revenue forecast from the 2018 feasibility study is a different matter. Neither Kayrros nor any buyer has published a revenue figure, and the free French registers show no filed accounts, so the target counts as missed.

What Kayrros Achieved After the Award

The money that mattered came from investors. In September 2018 Kayrros raised €21 million from Cathay Innovation, Korelya Capital and Index Ventures, according to Le Monde du Droit. In March 2022 it raised €40 million, including a €15 million venture loan from the European Investment Bank under the European Guarantee Fund, with Bpifrance's French Tech Souveraineté fund, NewSpace Capital and BNP Paribas's Opera Tech Ventures, according to the EIB and Cathay Capital. Both put total funding since 2016 at €72 million.

Recognition followed the methane work. TIME named Kayrros one of its 100 most influential companies in June 2023, according to the company and Wikipedia, which also lists the International Energy Agency and AXA among the users of its data. Kayrros claimed in the same release that Methane Watch could help reduce global warming by 0.5 degrees by 2100; that figure is the company's own estimate and has not been independently verified.

What Cannot Be Checked

Kayrros's revenue, losses and equity could not be verified: the free French registers show no published accounts and the business register API carries no financial data. The prices paid by Energy Aspects and Safran.AI were not disclosed, so it is not public whether investors made a gain. The register lists a separate company, KAYRROS SOUVERAINETE, created in May 2024 and also chaired by Fredrik Fosse, according to the French business register; its role in the defence carve-out is not public. Kayrros is not listed in the EIC Fund portfolio, which is consistent with a grant-only award.

Why Europe Should Care

Kayrros sat on two EU priorities. The first is methane. Regulation (EU) 2024/1787 on methane emissions in the energy sector requires the Commission to set up a satellite-based global methane monitoring tool and, from 2027, to admit oil, gas and coal imports only from producers that measure and verify emissions to EU standards, according to the EUR-Lex summary. A European company that turns Copernicus satellite data into leak detection is the kind of supplier that rule needs.

The second is strategic autonomy in space and defence intelligence. The French state invested through its French Tech Souveraineté fund, and Bpifrance described near real-time climate data as "a strategic advantage for a country's energy security", according to the EIB. The outcome splits along that line: the defence capability stayed in French hands with Safran, while the civil energy and climate business, including the methane work, now belongs to a London-based company.

The Verdict

Kayrros, Energy Aspects and Safran.AI have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.