MIRO Analytical Promised the EIC Accelerator 10 Gases: The Record

Monitoring stations that track air quality and climate gases usually need one instrument per gas: one box for ozone, another for nitrogen oxides, another for methane. MIRO Analytical, a 2018 spin-off of the Swiss materials research institute Empa, put ten of those measurements into one laser analyzer. In the European Innovation Council's October 2019 round it won an EIC Accelerator pilot grant to certify the device and take it to market. Four years later Bruker Corporation, the US scientific instrument maker, bought 58.26% of the company for CHF 8.8 million in cash, according to Bruker's 2023 annual report.

The European Commission's list of companies selected at the 9 October 2019 cut-off names the winner as "MIRO ANALYTICAL TECHNOLOGIES" of Dübendorf, project Envirolas, grant only, with no other partner company in the project. CORDIS records the same project under MIRO ANALYTICAL AG of Wallisellen. The Swiss commercial register on Zefix links the two: MIRO Analytical Technologies GmbH, registered in Dübendorf in March 2018, was converted into MIRO Analytical AG and moved to Wallisellen in spring 2020, under the same company number, CHE-310.331.351.

Where MIRO Analytical Stands Now

MIRO Analytical is an operating company and a majority-owned subsidiary of Bruker. Bruker's announcement of 4 October 2023 said MIRO "anticipated 2023 revenue of approximately $2.5 million" and did not disclose the price; the price appeared in Bruker's annual report, which says the deal closed on 2 October 2023 and that Bruker and the remaining shareholders hold options over the other 41.74%, exercisable "beginning in 2028 and in 2031". The founders' part of those options is tied to their continued employment, the report says. Startupticker reported the deal as Bruker's second Swiss acquisition of 2023.

The register shows Bruker taking control of the board. A notice published in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SHAB) on 23 October 2023 names Andreas Kamlowski, president of Bruker Optics, as chairman, with Hundt and Aseev moved down to ordinary board members. A notice of 29 January 2026 removes both founders from the board, according to Zefix, and North Data carries the same register record. Whether Hundt and Aseev still work for the company could not be verified; no announcement about their roles was found. The company's website still sells the MGA range under the MIRO name and lists its stand at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco in December 2026 at "Bruker booth #537". No accounts of MIRO are public, so its revenue and staff since 2023 could not be verified, and Bruker's annual reports for 2024 and 2025 do not mention MIRO by name.

The Technology: Ten Gases, One Laser Box

MIRO's analyzers use mid-infrared laser absorption spectroscopy. Several quantum cascade lasers, semiconductor lasers that can be tuned to the wavelengths at which particular molecules absorb light, are combined in one instrument, and the drop in light intensity through the sample gives the concentration of each gas. "So, it is a direct and absolute measurement method," Hundt told Empa in December 2022. Aseev added that the wavelengths were chosen so that "there are no cross-sensitivities to worry about".

The ten gases are six pollutants (carbon monoxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide, nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide and ammonia) and four greenhouse gases (water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide), according to the CORDIS objective. The CORDIS objective says that today each of these gases is measured with a separate, bulky instrument in a fixed station that needs regular calibration by specialist staff. MIRO's pitch was that one device would cost less to buy and run: the grant application promised "75% less operational costs, 40% lower startup costs", dimensions of 60 by 50 by 15 centimetres and a weight of 25 kilograms. CORDIS's own results article on the earlier Phase 1 project says the weight fell from "up to 200 kg" to 25 kg. These cost figures are the company's claims; no independent comparison was found.

What Envirolas Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

MIRO first won a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 grant for a feasibility study, Lazaero, which ran from 1 February to 31 May 2019. Envirolas followed. CORDIS gives a total cost of €1,784,677.50 and an EU contribution of €1,249,274.25, all to MIRO as sole participant, under the SME Instrument Phase 2 funding scheme. The grant agreement was signed on 1 April 2020, with the project dated from 1 January 2020 to 30 September 2022, and it is closed. CORDIS records the money as an EU contribution; no source found shows any other funder for the grant. Empa's article dates the award to 2019, the year of the cut-off, while MIRO's own project page says the grant came in 2020, the year of signature.

The objective listed concrete steps: add key hardware components, upgrade the software and user interface, refine manufacturing and define industrial scale-up, test the analyzer externally with early adopters, "certify EnviroLAS in EU and US", target "all Europe by 2024" and the US by 2026, and "create 27 new jobs in our company by 2026". The final periodic report, covering January 2021 to September 2022, says new laser spectroscopy components were built and tested, the electronics were redesigned and "tested at a certified EMC laboratory to obtain the CE marking", the software was rebuilt to automate calibration and sampling, analyzers were sold, and production moved to a new laboratory with "serial production and testing capacities". It also notes that the pandemic cancelled the trade shows planned for dissemination.

1. New hardware components and electronicsDeliveredDesigned, built and tested, per the CORDIS report.
2. Software and user interface upgradeDeliveredNew framework with automated calibration and sampling, per CORDIS.
3. Testing with early adoptersDeliveredZeppelin campaigns with Forschungszentrum Jülich in 2020, presented at EGU 2021.
4. Serial productionDeliveredNew production lab set up; Empa says devices are built in Wallisellen.
5. European market launch by 2024DeliveredCustomers in Germany and France, including DLR, Jülich, KIT and INRAE.
6. Certification in the EU and USNot achievedEMC tests towards CE marking reported; no EU or US air-monitoring approval announced.
7. US expansion by 2026Not achievedNo US customer or US launch announced; trade show presence via Bruker only.
8. 27 new jobs by 2026Not achieved8 employees in December 2022; no later headcount published.

The technical work and the first sales match the plan, and the project closed on its scheduled end date with a published final report. The regulatory part is where the record goes quiet. The report describes EMC testing towards CE marking, but neither MIRO nor Bruker has announced a completed EU or US certification of an MGA analyzer for official air-quality monitoring, and the product pages and Bruker's announcement address research and industrial users. Those two milestones, the US launch and the 27 jobs count as not delivered here because nobody has announced them.

What MIRO Has Achieved Since the Award

The analyzer found its market in climate and atmospheric research. In 2020 a MIRO instrument flew in three two-week campaigns on a commercial Zeppelin NT over Germany with Forschungszentrum Jülich, measuring all ten gases once per second, according to an EGU 2021 abstract co-authored by Hundt and Aseev. Empa listed Jülich and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology as customers in 2022, with one analyzer in Empa's station in the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) network and another in an aircraft of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Bruker's announcement named the German Space Agency, Jülich and the French research institute INRAE.

Other public money came alongside the EU grant. Empa lists a place in the European Space Agency's business incubator ESA BIC Switzerland in 2019, support from the Technology Fund in 2020 and from the Swiss Climate Foundation in 2021, and an Innosuisse Certificate in October 2022, a label awarded after the agency's start-up coaching programme. In the same article Hundt said MIRO would "likely turn a profit for the first time" in 2022. That could not be checked, because the company's accounts are not public.

The Money

The public figures are few but they fit together. Two EU grants totalled €1,299,274.25. The founders and three small shareholders put up CHF 20,000 at incorporation, raised to CHF 100,000 in 2020. Three years later Bruker paid CHF 8.8 million in cash for 58.26% of the shares, which values the whole company at about CHF 15.1 million if the price is scaled up proportionally; Bruker's report gives no valuation itself, and the option terms for the rest differ between the founders and the other shareholder. The EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all 16 pages, does not include MIRO, which matches its grant-only award.

Why Europe Should Care

Europe's air-quality rules depend on measurement. The revised Ambient Air Quality Directive, which entered into force on 10 December 2024, aligns the EU's 2030 limits more closely with World Health Organization guidance, updates standards for twelve pollutants and relies on a network of more than 4,000 monitoring stations. The Envirolas report cites around 400,000 premature deaths a year in Europe from air pollution. Greenhouse gas monitoring for research networks such as ICOS is the other half of MIRO's market.

The ownership story cuts the other way. The EIC funded a Swiss deep-tech spin-off to build a European instrument; control of that instrument now sits with a US-listed group, which, according to Empa's incubator glatec, sees MIRO's analyzers as a complement to Bruker's OMEGA and Matrix MG gas analyzers. For the technology that means distribution and a larger parent. For the EIC's aim of building European scale-ups, it is a case of a successful product bought early by a foreign strategic buyer.

The Verdict

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