Where Selerys' EIC Accelerator Thunderstorm Sensor Stands Today

Selerys, a company of 6 to 9 employees in Rousset near Aix-en-Provence, sells two things to people who fear storms: sensors and software that warn of thunderstorms and hail, and balloons that carry hygroscopic salts into storm clouds to turn hail into rain. In the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 cut-off of 5 June 2019 it won an EU grant of €1,633,275 for STORM H-1, a €2,333,250 project to industrialise EVEARLYS, a sensor that picks up the radio signals of lightning inside a developing storm cloud, and to sell storm warnings across Europe, according to CORDIS. The company is listed under its own name in the European Commission's list of 5 June 2019 winners; no other company of the project appears there, although CORDIS names Selerys' sister company Qwatmos as a linked third party.

Seven years later Selerys is active and profitable. It filed its 2025 accounts in July 2026, according to the BODACC, and reported a net profit of €356,261 for 2025, according to the French government's company directory. This week it is showing EVEARLYS and its Skydetect radar at the Meteorological Technology World Expo in Amsterdam, which runs from 6 to 8 October 2026.

A Small, Profitable Storm Specialist

Selerys is not a venture-backed start-up. Its share capital has stood at €475,000 since 2018, and no outside funding round could be found. It does not appear among the roughly 315 companies on the EIC Fund portfolio list, which is consistent with its grant-only award. Philippe Cardi founded it, and Fabrice Caquin joined him in 2015 to run it together, according to a profile by the French patent office INPI. Since 2023 both men also run Groupe Qwatmos, a holding company in Gréasque that became president of Selerys, according to the BODACC and Societe.com.

Its founding date is not consistent across sources. The company register dates the company to 2 January 2014, as does the fact line of INPI's 2025 finalists' release, whose text says "founded in 2015". A 2017 article in Agra called it a start-up founded in 2007. The register offers a possible explanation for an older history: in January 2016 Selerys bought, for €30,000, a business that designed, built and sold weather radars for locating and assessing storm cells from a company called International Communication Electronics, according to the BODACC. Whether that business is the source of the 2007 date could not be verified.

At the end of 2025 Selerys absorbed Qwatmos, the storm alert services company that had shared its Rousset address since 2018 and took part in the EU project. Selerys owned all 100,000 Qwatmos shares; the merger transferred €955,334 of assets and €450,181 of liabilities, took effect for accounting purposes on 1 January 2025, and was to be completed on 31 December 2025, according to the merger notice. Qwatmos was struck off the register in January 2026, according to the BODACC; the national statistics register gives 17 December 2025 as its closing date, two weeks earlier than the date in the merger notice. Selerys added Qwatmos' storm detection and forecasting services to its registered activity in January 2026, according to a further BODACC notice.

The Technology: Listening to Lightning Inside the Cloud

Selerys started with radar. Skydetect is a short-range radar that watches storm cells within 30 to 50 kilometres, according to INPI. Its customers paid about €60,000 for a radar or €800 a year per group of plots for an SMS alert service, according to a September 2018 report in Réussir, which said Selerys had about 100 customers in France. Coverage figures differ: Agra reported 3 million hectares in July 2017, rising to 4 million with new zones such as the Saint-Emilion vineyards, while Réussir reported more than 7 million hectares a year later. A second Réussir article counted 25 radars across France in 2018.

EVEARLYS, the sensor the EU paid to industrialise, is an interferometer. Instead of bouncing radio waves off raindrops like a radar, it listens for the very high and ultra high frequency (VHF and UHF) radio bursts that lightning gives off, including the flashes inside a cloud that start before lightning strikes the ground. Networks of synchronised sensors can then locate and track that activity, according to Selerys' expo profile. Radio interferometry of lightning is an established research method, used for example with the Long Wavelength Array radio telescope in New Mexico; Selerys' claim, in its final EU report, is that EVEARLYS is "the only industry-ready interferometry sensor in existence today". No independent comparison that would confirm this could be found. The same applies to the headline claim of the grant proposal, that the system anticipates "100% of thunderstorms, 40-60 minutes in advance and with 100m accuracy": it is the company's own figure, and no independent validation was found.

The third leg is active protection. Laïco balloons are filled with helium and carry hygroscopic salt flares that an on-board card fires inside a storm cell, to multiply small ice nuclei so that hail falls as rain. Réussir reported that 200 people had been trained to launch them by 2018 and quoted an effectiveness of 40 to 60% under optimal conditions; that figure is not independently confirmed either. In January 2021 the St-Emilion Wine Council approved a €1.3 million collective plan with 37 launchers from Selerys to cover about 7,500 hectares of vineyards, according to Decanter. Whether all 37 launchers were installed could not be verified. INPI says the company now wants to add artificial intelligence "directly" to the decision of when to release balloons.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

STORM H-1 ran from 1 October 2019 to 30 September 2022, on its original schedule; the grant agreement was signed on 21 October 2019, three weeks after the start date. Of the €1,633,275 EU contribution, €1,401,367.49 went to Selerys and €231,907.51 to Qwatmos, according to CORDIS. The work plan had five packages: industrialise EVEARLYS, turn it into a standalone storm anticipation service, run pilots in new markets, sign strategic partners, and prepare communication and regulatory work.

The final periodic report says the company "completed almost all" of its objectives. It says EVEARLYS and its services were finalised and commercially launched, with an official release at the International Met Technology Expo in Paris, which took place from 11 to 13 October 2022, according to the organisers' review. It reports three new markets (large institutional storm management programmes, local governments and expert meteorological organisations), seven strategic partnerships in seven countries, one additional patent, and that the project turned Selerys "from that of a start-up to an established SME with sustainable profits". The report names none of the partners, countries or customers.

1. Industrialise the EVEARLYS sensorDeliveredLaunched in 2022 per the final report; on sale and exhibited in 2026 per the expo listing.
2. Standalone storm anticipation service with AIPartlyCIRRUS platform is on sale per the website; INPI said in 2025 that AI in balloon decisions was still to come.
3. Three new market segmentsUnverifiedCompany-reported; no customer named.
4. Strategic partners in seven countriesUnverifiedCompany-reported; no partner named.
5. Services deployed across EuropeNot achievedNo European roll-out announced; INPI names Southeast Asia as the main export market.
6. Finish on timeDeliveredEnded 30 September 2022 as planned, final report published.

The gap is in the market side. The proposal aimed to "rapidly impose SELERYS as a European market leader" and to reach construction, heavy industry and water management clients "all over Europe". The public evidence after the project points elsewhere. Selerys' website shows the logos of the Moroccan and Romanian weather services, French defence procurement, carmakers and Bordeaux and Rhône wine estates, but announces no contract, and INPI's 2025 profile names Southeast Asia, not Europe, as its main export market. No contract in any Southeast Asian country could be found either.

The Money

Selerys files its annual accounts with a confidentiality declaration, so its revenue, balance sheet and staff numbers are not published in full, according to every accounts notice in the BODACC. Two figures are public. The government directory lists a 2025 net profit of €356,261, and Societe.com lists €356,300 for 2025 and €281,500 for 2024, a rise of 27%. Societe.com also shows debts due after more than a year falling from €1,478,500 to €1,367,900. The 2024 figure and the debt figures come from Societe.com alone. The 2025 result is the first after the retroactive merger with Qwatmos, so how much of it comes from Qwatmos' business, or from the €405,153 merger surplus, cannot be read from the public data.

INPI reported a 2024 research budget of €700,000, an intellectual property budget of €100,000, eight patent families and four trademarks. The company's equity base was built before the grant: share capital rose from €10,000 at registration to €240,000 in 2016 and €500,000 in 2017, then was cut to €475,000 in 2018, according to BODACC notices of 2014 and 2018.

Why It Matters for Europe

Storm and hail damage is one of the hazards the EU's 2021 strategy on adaptation to climate change asks member states and businesses to prepare for, and the European Environment Agency's Climate-ADAPT platform lists STORM H-1 among its adaptation projects. Lightning detection in Europe is already supplied by larger firms such as Finland's Vaisala, which built Poland's national network, and France's Meteorage, which signed a partnership with the South African Weather Service in 2024. Selerys' niche is cheaper, local equipment that a vineyard, a factory or a municipality can own and act on, including hail suppression with balloons.

The Verdict

Selerys was not asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.