Where optiQGain's EIC Accelerator Raman Gas Analyser Stands Today

Gas companies check what flows through their pipes and turbines with analysers that are either slow or limited to a few molecules. optiQGain, a small company in Yavne, south of Tel Aviv, said it could do better with a laser method called stimulated Raman scattering: a full molecular fingerprint of a gas "in 0.1 seconds", sent by fibre optic cable to a control unit. In the 9 January 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, the European Commission selected its SRSensor project, according to the Commission's list of winners, which names OPTIQGAIN LTD of Yavne as the only beneficiary of the project. The EU contributed €1,788,682 to a €2,555,260 project that ran from 1 May 2019 to 31 October 2022, according to CORDIS.

Four years after the project ended, the record is thin. The last progress report on CORDIS describes a sensor being redesigned and tests delayed. No certified product, field demonstration or customer has been announced. The company's domain now serves an Indonesian online gambling page, and two start-up databases say optiQGain stopped operating in March 2024. The Israeli company register, however, still lists the company as active.

Where optiQGain Stands Now

The public signals point in different directions. The Israeli Corporations Authority's company list, published on the government's open data portal and refreshed on 7 October 2026, records OPTIQGAIN LTD as "active", with its last annual report filed for 2025, according to the register entry; OpenCorporates shows the same status and address. The same entry flags it as a "violating company" (חברה מפרה), a designation the Israeli Ministry of Justice applies to companies that have not filed an annual report or not paid the annual fee for one or more of the previous seven years. Which of the two applies to optiQGain is not public.

The start-up trackers are less ambiguous. startupim, which draws on Startup Nation Central's Finder database, lists optiQGain as "non-active" and says it "ceased to operate" in March 2024, and PitchBook's public profile lists it as out of business. Two other databases disagree: CB Insights calls the company "alive", and startuphub lists it as "actively operating" with two employees in Tel Aviv, not Yavne. Neither cites a recent event. optiqgain.com, the address the EU winner list and CORDIS give for the company, no longer carries any company content: on 7 October 2026 it served an Indonesian lottery and slot-machine page behind an expired security certificate. No announcement of a closure, sale or insolvency by the company itself could be found.

The Technology: Raman Fingerprints in Real Time

When laser light hits a molecule, a tiny fraction of it comes back at a shifted wavelength, and the pattern of shifts identifies the molecule. Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) drives this effect with a pump laser and a second laser instead of relying on spontaneous scattering. optiQGain's design, as described in its US patent 9,874,522, filed in March 2015 and granted in January 2018, combines a tunable pump laser with an array of fixed-wavelength lasers, analogue signal processing before digitisation, and calibration samples to correct for unstable laser sources, with the aim of a small, robust SRS spectrophotometer for industrial, medical and field use. A second patent, US 10,921,184, filed in March 2017 and granted in February 2021, covers an SRS spectroscope built on a passive Q-switched laser. CB Insights counts three patent filings and one grant in 2021, and says the company integrates SRS into hollow-core fibres.

The selling point against established process analysers was speed and breadth. Existing gas analysers "might be accurate and affordable, but they are very slow", the EU's summary of the Phase 1 project says, and the company's Phase 1 report notes that simple non-dispersive infrared instruments are used where only "one to a few main analytes" matter, while more complex mixtures need full-spectrum analysers. The Phase 2 objective promised a "real-time, lightweight, cost effective, IoT based" analyser whose readings would let operators of natural gas plants, pipelines, turbines and biogas plants adjust their processes, cut maintenance costs and avoid unexpected engine and turbine failures. No independent test of the sensor's accuracy or speed has been published.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The 2019 award followed a smaller one. In January 2018 optiQGain received €50,000 under SME Instrument Phase 1 for a four-month feasibility study focused on biogas, in which, according to the report, it reviewed initial tests run "in conjunction with General Electric" and defined the upgrades to components and firmware needed for Phase 2. CORDIS lists no other EU projects for the company.

The Phase 2 plan, as set out on CORDIS, had five parts: upgrade the sensor's subcomponents and finish its industrial design; move production to a contract manufacturer, which the periodic report names as SICK; adapt the system for natural gas and biogas plants, turbines and pipelines; demonstrate and validate it at several sites; and obtain CE and ATEX (explosive atmosphere) certification for market launch, along with further patents.

The only published report covers the period from 1 May 2020 to 31 October 2021 and was last updated on 1 April 2022. It says the company reviewed the specifications and tested the product internally, and that the results "yielded a change in the architecture of the sensor in order to maximize functionality and minimize costs". The new architecture was still being finalised, and functionality testing had been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Commercially, the company had "reached out" to potential partners in France, Italy, Germany and Asia. The project ran for another year after that period; no final report was published. The results page lists one deliverable, an updated company website, which is no longer online.

1. Upgraded sensor and industrial designPartialArchitecture redesigned by 2021; completion not reported.
2. Production at a contract manufacturer (SICK)Not achievedNo production by SICK or any other manufacturer announced.
3. Field demonstrations with gas and biogas companiesNot achievedNo site, partner or result published.
4. CE and ATEX certification, market launchNot achievedNo certification or product launch announced.
5. Additional patentsUnverifiedA patent filed in 2017 was granted in 2021; no filing made during the project could be confirmed.

Under this series' rule, a promised milestone that neither the company nor a third party has announced counts as not delivered. On that basis SRSensor did not deliver: the grant funded a redesign, but not the certified, field-proven analyser it was meant to put on the market. CORDIS does not say whether the project closed on schedule or how much of the €1,788,682 was paid out.

The Money

optiQGain's private funding cannot be pinned down. As a private Israeli company it does not have to publish accounts, and no filed revenue, loss or staff figure could be found. The trackers contradict each other: startupim puts total funding at $2 million, including a 2019 EU grant it gives as €2 million, more than the €1,788,682 on CORDIS, and an undisclosed round from ESIL in August 2023; startuphub puts total funding at $7 million. CB Insights names the Southern Israel Bridging Fund and Horizon 2020 as investors, without dates or amounts. None of these rounds could be confirmed by an announcement from the company or an investor. The 2019 award was grant only, and no investment by the EIC Fund has been announced.

Why Europe Should Care

The problem SRSensor targeted has become more pressing since 2019. The European Commission wants EU biomethane production to reach 35 billion cubic metres a year by 2030, a goal set out in the REPowerEU plan of May 2022, and launched a Biomethane Industrial Partnership in September 2022 to get there. Feeding upgraded biogas into gas grids, and burning gases of changing composition in turbines, makes fast, continuous gas-quality measurement more valuable, which is the case optiQGain made in its EU applications. A fast multi-gas analyser would serve that goal, but optiQGain has not shown that its sensor works outside its own tests.

The Verdict

optiQGain has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, EU project data and third-party databases, linked throughout.