A Second Look at Nanolike's EIC Accelerator Silo and Tank Sensors

Nanolike, a Toulouse company founded in 2012 to make nanoparticle-based strain sensors, was selected in the EIC Accelerator pilot's 9 October 2019 cut-off for TankSensor, a clip-on sensor and software service that reports how full industrial containers are. The project received an EU contribution of €1,777,301.75 towards a total cost of €2,539,002.50 and ran from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2021, according to CORDIS. The European Commission's list of selected companies names "Nanolike" of Labège as a grant-only winner, with no partner companies on the project. The pitch targeted the chemical industry. Seven years later, Nanolike is trading and has a cement multinational as a shareholder, but the customers it showcases fill silos with cement and animal feed rather than chemicals.

The company that won the grant is not the one that was founded in 2012. The original Nanolike SAS (SIREN 750483505) entered receivership on 14 June 2018. On 31 July 2018 the Toulouse commercial court converted the case into liquidation and approved a sale plan, and on 4 August 2020 it closed the liquidation for lack of assets, according to BODACC notices and the French company directory. A new company also named NANOLIKE (SIREN 842146094) started trading on 1 August 2018 at the same Labège address, with €850,000 of share capital and Benoit Perrin as president, according to its BODACC registration notice and the directory entry. Who bought the business under the sale plan is not stated in the notices.

Where Nanolike Stands Now

Nanolike is active. The French directory lists NANOLIKE SAS as an operating company with 10 to 19 employees in 2024 and gives a 2024 net loss of €912,464, according to annuaire-entreprises; the data provider Tracxn counted 11 employees in May 2026. Revenue is not public: every set of accounts since 2018 was filed with a confidentiality declaration, according to BODACC. The only revenue figure found, €1.41 million with 13 staff for 2022, comes from the company profile of Le Journal des Entreprises and could not be checked against a second source.

The company published a customer case study on Holcim Spain on 19 November 2025 on its website, and it exhibited at the International Production and Processing Expo in Atlanta in January 2026 (booth B28049), according to the IPPE 2026 exhibitor list and its own events page. It sells three products: BinConnect for livestock feed bins, SiloConnect for cement silos and TankConnect for intermediate bulk containers (IBCs), the palletised plastic tanks used to ship chemicals.

The Technology: Weighing a Silo From Its Legs

Most silo and tank level gauges look at the contents: radar or ultrasonic sensors mounted in the roof, or load cells built into the supports. Nanolike's sensor is bolted to the outside of a silo leg, or slipped between an IBC and its pallet, and measures the tiny deformation of the structure as it fills; software then converts the strain into a fill level and forecasts when the container will run empty. The sensor has a battery life of at least five years, installs in under 30 minutes and sends data over cellular or Sigfox networks, according to the connectivity provider 1NCE and Nanolike's TankConnect page, which gives an IBC accuracy of "up to 10%". A February 2026 comparison by the industrial software firm Factory AI, itself a competitor, places Nanolike's bolt-on strain gauges against radar from VEGA and Endress+Hauser, acoustic sensors from BinMaster and load cells from LoadTrack.

The description of the sensor itself has changed. The 2016 NANOMAN project on CORDIS described nanosensors made by convective self-assembly of nanoparticles, "100x smaller, 50x more sensitive and 10 000x less energy consuming than other sensors", and the TankSensor summary still speaks of a "proprietary strain nanosensor". Lafarge's June 2024 press release describes the SiloConnect sensor as "une jauge de contrainte mécanique", a mechanical strain gauge, with artificial intelligence that recalibrates it continuously. Whether the products still use the nanoparticle gauges is not stated in either source.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

TankSensor was framed around chemical logistics. The CORDIS objective says chemical companies were "stuck with the archaic fill level tank monitoring" and that the support would let Nanolike "scale-up our sales by reaching new market segments and increasing production volumes". The grant agreement was signed on 3 March 2020, two months after the project's official start, and CORDIS lists the project as closed.

The final periodic report, covering 2021, lists what Nanolike says it did: a new long-battery electronics board for Sigfox, a second board with cellular connectivity for countries without Sigfox, production capacity raised to 200,000 units a year, machine learning models for measurement, forecasting and geolocation, and a new API to link to customers' IT systems. It also reports prospecting chemical distributors in 8 EU countries and feed distributors and manufacturers in 12, "closing a total of 8 MOUs / partnership agreements". The report's own illustrations include "TankSensor for agriculture and construction markets" and a "Mobile app for SILO", so the move into silos was already part of the funded work.

1. IBC fill-level sensor on the marketDeliveredTankConnect is sold; Kersia and Gaches Chimie named as users.
2. Sigfox and cellular electronicsDeliveredBoth networks used, per 1NCE and the product page.
3. Forecasting and geolocation softwareDeliveredWeb platform and app with stock forecasts.
4. Capacity of 200,000 units a yearUnverifiedStated in the CORDIS report only.
5. Lead IoT logistics for chemicalsPartialNone of 7 published case studies is a chemical customer.

The product the EU paid for exists and is still on sale, and the project ran to its scheduled end date. What did not follow is the chemical market as the main business. All seven case studies on Nanolike's website, dated June and November 2025, concern cement (Holcim in France, Greece, Spain and Mexico) or animal feed (B-W Feed, Meuneries Mondou and Molesworth Farm Supply).

What Happened After the Grant

The cement business came through the EIC's own matchmaking. Nanolike met Holcim at the first EIC Corporate Day with the group in January 2021, ran a proof of concept in Greece that Holcim evaluated in October 2021, and was then in talks to roll out across the 70 countries where Holcim operates, the EIC reported in March 2022. Holcim Greece became the first Holcim unit to use SiloConnect in 2021 and has connected more than 80 silos, according to a Nanolike case study.

In September 2023 Holcim took a stake of about 20% in Nanolike after testing SiloConnect on around 200 silos in France and Greece, with more than 3,000 silos expected to be equipped within two to three years, according to Kurrant. Holcim and AllNews confirmed the investment and the plan to deploy "thousands of sensors" over three years, without giving the size of the stake. The register shows the same month a capital increase to €1,272,500, Jean-Jacques Bois replacing Benoit Perrin as president, and a strategic committee that includes Holcim's R&D head Edelio Bermejo, according to BODACC; Nanolike's about page lists Bermejo as the board member representing Holcim. Whether the 3,000-silo target was met has not been published.

In feed, Nanolike announced its first Canadian rollout of several hundred feed bin sensors in February 2022, opened a Montreal office in May 2022 and agreed in July 2022 to equip 300 feed bins for the Quebec feed maker Meuneries Mondou, according to Feed and Additive. Both Meuneries Mondou and the Canadian distributor Molesworth Farm Supply appear as customers in Nanolike's 2025 case studies. In June 2024 Lafarge Ciments began offering SiloConnect to its own customers so that replenishment orders are triggered automatically, according to Lafarge's press release, which named the builders' merchant Chausson Matériaux as a user.

The total raised is unclear. CB Insights counts $2.39 million over 6 rounds; Tracxn counts $835,000 over 4 rounds. The earliest round on record is €700,000 from Newfund, Breega Capital and INSEAD Angels in January 2015, reported by Maddyness, which went into the company that was later liquidated. Nanolike is not in the EIC Fund portfolio, checked across all pages in October 2026, which fits a grant-only award.

Why It Matters for Europe

The EU's transition pathway for the chemical industry, published in January 2023, calls for digital tools to make the sector greener and more resilient, which is the argument TankSensor made: fewer emergency deliveries and fewer stranded containers. The CORDIS report claims customers handling IBCs can save "up to 35%" in logistics costs and that tracking unused containers could lift recycling of the 30 to 40 kg plastic tanks; neither figure has been independently tested. Holcim Spain reports in a Nanolike case study that last-minute deliveries halved and truck productivity rose 12%, figures published by the vendor.

The Verdict

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