sensiBel: An EIC Accelerator Story of Light-Based Microphones

For decades, the small microphones inside phones, earbuds and laptops have worked the same way: a thin diaphragm moves against a fixed backplate, and a chip measures the change in capacitance between them. sensiBel, a spin-out from the Norwegian research institute SINTEF, reads the diaphragm with a laser instead. In the European Innovation Council's January 2020 round it was selected for blended finance, and the EU paid it a grant of €2,500,000 towards a €4,669,046.25 project, OptiMEMS2, to shrink its optical microphone into a standard chip package and hand production to high-volume manufacturers, according to CORDIS.

The project closed in October 2022 with the microphone sampled to lead customers, its final report says. The first commercial product, the SBM100B, followed in June 2025, according to audioXpress. The company's filed accounts show what that wait cost: total operating revenue of NOK 3.52 million in 2025 against a net loss of NOK 28.03 million, according to the Brønnøysund Register Centre.

Where sensiBel Stands Now

sensiBel is an active company. The Brønnøysund register lists it as a private limited company with no bankruptcy or winding-up on record, 21 employees, share capital of NOK 5,044,112 and accounts filed for 2025. It was registered on 28 October 2016 as AOD Labs AS and took the name sensiBel AS in March 2018. Its own About page gives 2017 as the founding year, while the register and the CORDIS objective both place the spin-out in 2016.

The news flow in 2026 is about manufacturing. In May the company named the Swedish MEMS foundry Silex Microsystems as the maker of the microphone's MEMS element, according to evertiq and eeNews Europe. In September it announced a deal with X-Celeprint of Cork, Ireland, to make its optical module, which it calls optoKore, by micro-transfer printing, so that "we can make thousands of our optical modules on a single wafer", in the words of chief executive Kieran Harney to audioXpress; the company's own news page carries the same announcement. AAC Technologies is its assembly and test partner, according to audioXpress and the company's press profile.

Harney, a MEMS microphone veteran who built Analog Devices' microphone business and later ran audio products at TDK InvenSense, replaced Sverre Dale Moen, chief executive since 2018, on 3 September 2025, according to audioXpress; the company's management page lists him as CEO.

The Technology: Reading a Diaphragm With Light

A conventional MEMS microphone measures the electric field between its moving diaphragm and a backplate, which limits how faint a sound it can pick out from its own electrical noise and how loud a sound it can take before distorting. In sensiBel's design, a laser projects light onto the microphone membrane and a photodetector captures the reflection, which an application-specific chip turns into a digital signal, according to Sennheiser's investment announcement. The company's technology page names the parts: a vertical-cavity laser, a photodetector and a diffractive optical element.

The claimed result is a microphone a few millimetres across with the noise floor of a studio microphone. The SBM100B is specified at an 80 dBA signal-to-noise ratio, a 146 dB SPL acoustic overload point and a 132 dB dynamic range, according to audioXpress and EDN, which named it a 2025 Product of the Year in its sensors category. A second model, the SBM140B, raises the signal-to-noise ratio to 84 dBA; it is being sampled, with full production planned for the first quarter of 2027, the company says. These are the company's specifications; no independent laboratory comparison was found.

What OptiMEMS2 Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The European Commission's list of companies selected at the 8 January 2020 cut-off names SENSIBEL AS of Oslo as the only beneficiary of OptiMEMS2, with blended finance, that is a grant plus EIC equity. The grant agreement was signed on 5 June 2020 and the project ran from 1 May 2020 to 31 October 2022 under the SME Instrument phase 2 funding scheme of Horizon 2020, according to CORDIS. It followed a €50,000 phase 1 feasibility study, OptiMEMS, from December 2018 to May 2019. A CORDIS search for the company returns one other EU project: VOICI, a Clean Sky 2 project coordinated by SINTEF from March 2018 to February 2020 to build a voice assistant for aircraft cockpits, in which sensiBel was a partner with a net EU contribution of €148,750.

The objective on CORDIS sets two levels of ambition. The project itself was to miniaturise and integrate every component of the optical microphone and transfer the technology to high-volume manufacturing partners. The company's stated aim was "to become the global #1 MEMS microphone supplier for the voice-first user interface and high-fidelity audio and sound capture markets". The final report, for May 2021 to October 2022, says every component was miniaturised into a small package with digital output, an ASIC was implemented, components were made at "high-volume capable partners", assembly ran on fully automated equipment and samples were with lead customers who confirmed the performance.

1. Miniaturised, integrated optical microphone with digital outputDeliveredReported in the final report; sold as the SBM100B from June 2025.
2. ASIC for optical signal processingDeliveredImplemented, per CORDIS.
3. Transfer to high-volume manufacturing partnersLateAutomated assembly by 2022; Silex and X-Celeprint named only in 2026, full SBM140B production planned for 2027.
4. Market launchLateFirst commercial product 32 months after the project ended.
5. Leading supplier for voice interfaces, headsets and consumer devicesNot achievedNo phone, earbud or laptop maker has been named as a customer; 2025 sales were NOK 1.36 million.

The engineering was done on schedule: by the end of the grant the microphone existed in its final form and customers had samples. What took longer was the commercial step the project was meant to set up. Two and a half years passed between the project's end and the first sale, and the high-volume foundry and optical module partners were announced three and a half years after it.

What sensiBel Has Achieved Since the Award

The equity part of the blended finance arrived with the private round. In April 2022 sensiBel raised €15 million in a Series A led by Germany's TRUMPF Venture, with the EIC Fund, Skagerak Capital, Investinor and SINTEF Venture IV, according to ArcticStartup and Silicon Canals. The EIC Fund's share was not disclosed. sensiBel appears on the EIC Fund's official list of invested companies.

In February 2024 the German audio company Sennheiser, together with existing investors, put €7 million into sensiBel, according to Sennheiser and rAVe. At that point the microphone was still "sampling with lead customers", the Sennheiser announcement says.

The first named customer product came in May 2026: mh acoustics' em64d Eigenmike, a spherical array for spatial audio recording, ships with 64 SBM100B microphones, according to audioXpress and sensiBel. In September 2026 the company added its own 32-microphone array kit, NOVA32, aimed at drone detection, machine monitoring and acoustic cameras, according to its announcement. Both are professional and industrial niches; none of the high-volume consumer brands the project targeted has been announced.

The Money

Three years of accounts are available from the Brønnøysund Register Centre. Sales income rose from NOK 463,682 in 2023 to NOK 1,157,884 in 2024 and NOK 1,361,665 in 2025, when total operating revenue reached NOK 3,520,746. The net result was a loss of NOK 43.79 million in 2023, NOK 24.67 million in 2024 and NOK 28.03 million in 2025, each after a tax credit of NOK 7.8 million to 13.7 million.

Equity rose from NOK 63.28 million at the end of 2023 to NOK 178.83 million at the end of 2024. With the 2024 loss of NOK 24.67 million, that implies about NOK 140 million of new equity in the year (178.83 minus 63.28 plus 24.67). The only round announced in 2024 was Sennheiser's €7 million. What made up the rest could not be verified. By the end of 2025 equity was NOK 153.02 million, cash NOK 4.66 million and other current investments NOK 20.39 million, down from NOK 6.81 million and NOK 90.95 million a year earlier.

Why Europe Should Care

The European Chips Act, in force since 21 September 2023, aims to "ensure the resilience of supply chains and reduce external dependencies" and to build Europe's capacity to design, make and package chips, according to the European Commission. sensiBel's chosen supply chain is largely European: the MEMS element is made by Silex in Sweden, the optical module by X-Celeprint in Ireland, and the CORDIS report says the microphone was developed with "many high-tech semiconductor industry partner[s] in Europe".

The Verdict

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