NanoScent: An EIC Accelerator Story of Smelling COVID on Breath

In the spring of 2020, as airports emptied and laboratories ran short of PCR capacity, a small company in the Galilee proposed something faster: breathe through your nose into a bag, and a chip would smell the virus within a minute. NanoScent, founded in 2017 to build an electronic nose, was one of the companies the European Innovation Council picked in its March 2020 round. The EU paid €2,499,233.63 of the €3,570,333.75 project, according to CORDIS.

Six years later, the test has no approval that can be found, the company's last public news is from December 2023, and the Israeli company register lists NanoScent under an order opening insolvency proceedings, recorded on 12 April 2026, according to the Israeli Corporations Authority's change records.

Where NanoScent Stands Now

The Israeli company register still shows NanoScent as "active", but its sub-status reads "צו לפתיחת הליכים", an order opening proceedings under Israel's 2018 insolvency law, and its last filed annual report is for 2024. The register's change records date the entry to 12 April 2026. The court that issued the order, its exact date and the name of any trustee could not be found in public sources. OpenCorporates confirms the company number, name and Misgav address but shows only the main status.

Under the 2018 law, such an order normally brings an immediate stay of claims and hands control from the company's board to a court-appointed trustee, who then decides whether the business is rehabilitated or liquidated, as Israeli law firm Bar Law explains. Which way NanoScent's case will go is not public.

Other signs point the same way. The start-up database Startupim lists the company as "Non Active" since February 2024, and Tracxn put its headcount at 5 in August 2026. An archived copy of the company website from September 2025 shows its newest post dated 18 December 2023. When checked for this article on 14 October 2026, the nanoscentlabs.com address no longer led to the company's site but redirected to unrelated websites.

The Technology: An Electronic Nose on a Chip

NanoScent's sensors are chemiresistors: layers of nanoparticles whose electrical resistance changes when volatile organic compounds, the molecules that make up a smell, settle on them. An array of differently coated sensors produces a pattern for each mixture, and machine-learning software matches the pattern to a known scent. The company was described as a spin-off of the Technion, Israel's institute of technology, when Sumitomo Chemical invested in it. The CORDIS report says the passenger fills the bag without help from skilled staff, which is what the company pitched for screening crowds.

The company first pitched the nose for consumer and industrial uses. In December 2019 Sumitomo Chemical invested $2 million to develop health monitoring based on scent data; other uses named were detecting hazardous substances in plants and cities and managing scents in cars. When COVID-19 arrived, NanoScent put the COVID test first. In the version described to the Times of Israel in May 2020, a person exhales through the nose into a disposable bag, a "scent recorder" reads the sample in about 30 seconds, and the result goes to the cloud. In May 2020 Sumitomo agreed to provide about 70% of the funding for the COVID sensor, according to Chemical Engineering.

What the EIC Award Promised, and What the Record Shows

The European Commission's list of selected companies names NANOSCENT LTD, with the acronym "NanoScent COVID-19", as a grant-only winner under the EIC Accelerator pilot, with no partner companies. The grant agreement was signed on 27 July 2020 and the project ran from 1 August 2020 to 31 July 2022, according to CORDIS. Its objective was a low-cost point-of-care screening tool to replace the thermometer checks of the time, with PCR, in the company's words, costing "€100s" and taking one to two days.

The only report CORDIS publishes is labelled as covering August 2021 to July 2022, the project's second year. It still opens its results section with "The project has recently started" and lists plans rather than outcomes: direct sales to hospitals, airports and airlines, approaches to IATA, the WHO and the US CDC, CE certification, and "at least one peer-reviewed professional paper". It reports no sensitivity figures, no certification and no customer.

Evidence outside CORDIS is thin. NanoScent ran a training study with Sheba Medical Center in 2020 and collected samples at Ichilov and Poriya hospitals, the Times of Israel reported, and in August 2020 it signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi's G42 to develop the breath test, which G42 planned to run thousands of times, according to Reuters as published by Walla. The only performance figures found are in an abstract for a talk at the Breath Biopsy Conference 2021: in 152 people at an unnamed Israeli hospital, 45 of them PCR-positive, the test found 76% of infections and correctly cleared 75% of uninfected people. By November 2021 NanoScent was still seeking FDA approval and working with European regulators, Calcalist reported. No CE mark, FDA authorisation, peer-reviewed paper on the COVID test or deployment at an airport or airline could be found.

1. Point-of-care breath screening devicePrototypeDevice built and used in hospital studies (Times of Israel, Calcalist); never sold as a COVID test.
2. Clinical validationPartly76% sensitivity and 75% specificity in 152 people, published only as a conference abstract.
3. CE certificationNot achievedNo CE mark or FDA authorisation announced.
4. Peer-reviewed paperNot achievedNone found for the COVID test.
5. Airports, airlines, IATA and WHO adoptionNot achievedNo deployment announced; G42 deal of 2020 had no reported outcome.

In fairness, a grant funds development, and NanoScent did build a device and test it on patients. But the project's own report shows the gap: two years and €2.5 million of EU money produced a feasibility result that never left a conference abstract.

The Hydrogen Turn

By 2022 NanoScent was presenting its VOCID platform to food, pharmaceutical and biopharma manufacturers, in a sponsored article in TheMarker. A year later it had moved again. In March 2023 it announced that Adamo Screnci, a former executive at Air Liquide, McPhy and TotalEnergies, had joined its board, and it described VOCID H2Confirm, a sensor system to monitor hydrogen purity in real time along the supply chain, according to Hydrogen Central. The company website said the product checks impurities against the ISO 14687 fuel-cell standard within minutes. In September 2023 TheMarker described a 20-person company "founded to prevent damage to hydrogen fuel cells" with eight registered patents.

The Israel Innovation Authority lists NanoScent under energy, with 20 employees and "initial revenues", targeting oil and gas, electrolyser and hydrogen refuelling customers, and records support in 2023 and 2024, including a 2023 programme to raise Israeli participation in Horizon Europe. No paying hydrogen customer has been named, and CORDIS lists no Horizon Europe project with NanoScent; its only EU project is the COVID grant.

The Money

NanoScent never announced a priced round with a named lead investor, and the totals it gave changed fast. It had raised "about $5 million", including Israel Innovation Authority grants, with Sumitomo as lead investor, in May 2020 (Times of Israel); "about $20 million", mostly from Sumitomo, in November 2021 (Calcalist); and "$10M in equity and $10M in non-dilutive grants" in March 2023 (Hydrogen Central). The sources also disagree on the Japanese backer: the Times of Israel and Calcalist name Sumitomo Corp., while Sumitomo Chemical's own investment was reported in 2019 and 2020. Calcalist says Korea's Dreamtech signed a memorandum of understanding; no closed Dreamtech round was found. Israeli private companies do not file public accounts, so revenue, losses and cash are not public.

Why Europe Should Care

NanoScent fits two EU priorities in turn. The March 2020 round was the EIC's emergency answer to the pandemic, and a cheap mass-screening test was what governments lacked that spring. The hydrogen product fit the EU hydrogen strategy of July 2020 and the REPowerEU goal of producing and importing 10 million tonnes of hydrogen each by 2030. NanoScent's pitch was that trace impurities damage fuel cells and that its monitor could check hydrogen quality on site within minutes. Neither market produced a lasting business for NanoScent.

The Verdict

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