Sensoneo Revenue Up 17-Fold Since EIC Accelerator Smart Bin Grant

Sensoneo, a Bratislava company founded in 2017, makes ultrasonic sensors that report how full a waste bin is, and software that turns those readings into collection routes. In the Green Deal round of the EIC Accelerator pilot, with the cut-off of 19 May 2020, it was selected for a grant of €1,368,388 towards SENS, a €1,954,840 project to fit sensors and identification tags to the bins of two European capitals and prove that data-driven collection saves money and emissions, according to CORDIS. The European Commission's list of selected companies names Sensoneo, j.s.a. alone for the project, with "grant" as the type of finance.

Six years on, the company is larger and profitable. Its filed accounts show net turnover of €12.78 million and a net profit of €239,850 for 2025, against €743,826 of turnover and a loss of €277,392 in 2020, the year the project began, according to the Slovak register of financial statements. Much of the growth has come from a market that SENS did not mention: the IT systems behind national deposit return schemes for bottles and cans.

What Sensoneo Does Today

The company is active and still files on time. The commercial register shows no liquidation or insolvency entry, the same registered address since 2017 and Martin Basila as chairman of the board since incorporation. Its 2025 accounts were filed in June 2026. In March 2026 it announced that it had joined IoT-ZERO, a Horizon Europe project on near-zero-energy devices for 6G networks coordinated by TU Wien, where it is to supply smart city and logistics test cases. CORDIS lists the project from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2029, with €177,750 for Sensoneo.

The product range has moved well beyond the bin sensor. Sensoneo's reference page lists deposit return IT systems in nine countries: Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore and Slovakia. Independent coverage confirms several of them. Slovakia's environment ministry chose Sensoneo to build the IT for the national deposit system, which started on 1 January 2022, according to CC.cz. In Ireland, scheme operator Re-turn runs the system on Sensoneo's platform; it took back 1.2 billion containers in its first year, according to Let's Recycle, and nearly 2.5 billion by its second anniversary in February 2026, according to Waste Management World. Romania's RetuRO scheme was scheduled to launch on 30 November 2023 with Sensoneo's software, Petnology reported.

The sensors have not gone away. Madrid deployed 11,100 Sensoneo fill-level sensors in early 2023 under its city-wide collection contract, which the company calls the largest such installation, according to Sensoneo's case study; Recycling Magazine reported the same number of sensors in March 2023. In September 2025 Basila told Startitup that the company's strongest results were in deposit and reverse logistics systems, that its US business, run from an office opened in Tampa in 2024, focused on sensors, and that it was opening an office in Singapore. How turnover splits between sensors, collection software and deposit IT is not published.

The Technology: Collect Bins When They Are Full

Most cities empty bins on fixed rounds, whether a container is overflowing or nearly empty. Sensoneo's sensor sits under the bin lid, measures the fill level with ultrasound and sends the reading over IoT or mobile networks; the software then plans routes and frequencies around the bins that actually need emptying. The CORDIS objective claimed this cuts collection costs by "at least 30%" and emissions by "up to 60%" in cities. Those are the company's figures, not independent measurements.

Before the award, Prague had already tested the idea. From February 2019 the city leased 464 Sensoneo sensors for 16 months in ten districts for CZK 2.635 million, and its ICT agency judged the pilot beneficial and recommended extending it, according to Lupa.cz. Sensoneo's own Prague reference now counts 3,294 sensors in underground bins and says the average fill level at collection rose from 45% in 2018 to 71% in 2024, a figure no third party has published.

SENS added two harder goals. One was to tag every bin in a capital so that a truck could record each emptying per household, the precondition for charging residents by the amount they throw away. The other was a radar sensor that could tell when biowaste is contaminated with other waste, which the company said no product could yet do.

What SENS Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

SENS ran from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2022 under the Green Deal topic of the EIC Accelerator pilot; the grant agreement was signed on 5 November 2020. The objective on CORDIS set four aims: tag all 110,000 bins in one EU capital, become "the first market player in the world to unlock the pay-as-you-waste business model", finish a radar sensor prototype for contamination, and run large pilots with two capitals. The company's award announcement added large-scale monitoring of electronic waste, textile waste and underground bins.

The pilots happened. In Bratislava, the city and its collection company OLO planned sensors on 1,753 glass and semi-underground containers, QR or RFID tags on every container or bag and Sensoneo's WatchDog tracking units on all 92 collection trucks, with stages running to April 2022, according to Startitup. In Prague, the city company Pražské služby planned to analyse collection, redraw routes for its more than 130,000 containers, drive them with Sensoneo's navigation and monitor 550 electronic waste containers, according to Waste & Recycling, which said the project was co-funded by the EIC.

The final CORDIS report says Sensoneo tagged and monitored "more than 100 000 waste bins in 2 European capitals", installed more than 4,000 sensors, fitted WatchDog units to the cities' collection fleets, and built and validated a radar sensor prototype. It reports a 20% efficiency gain against the original situation in Prague. It also names a cost overrun: personnel costs rose because of "a lot of unforeseen software and hardware development". It does not say that either city started charging households by the waste they produce.

1. Pilots in two EU capitalsDeliveredBratislava and Prague, per the CORDIS report and city coverage.
2. Tag all 110,000 bins in one capitalPartly"More than 100 000" bins across two capitals, not 110,000 in one.
3. Radar contamination sensor prototypeDeliveredPrototype built and validated; no product launch for biowaste detection announced.
4. Unlock pay-as-you-waste feesNot achievedNo city has announced per-household charging from the pilots.
5. E-waste, textile and underground bin monitoringPartly550 e-waste containers and underground bins in Prague; no textile results published.

For a two-year grant, this is a respectable record: both cities took part on a large scale, the hardware was built and the results were reported on time. The commercial idea at the heart of the proposal, metering each household's waste so cities can bill by volume, did not leave the pilot stage, which is why this article rates the project partly delivered.

The Money

The company's filings show how close it came to running out of cash. Turnover more than doubled in 2022 to €4.55 million, but the year still ended with a loss of €299,632 and cash of €59,458, according to the 2022 accounts in the register. At the end of 2021 equity had turned negative, at minus €122,025, while long-term liabilities had risen to €2.62 million; the accounts on the register do not say what those liabilities were.

Equity investors filled the gap twice. In October 2021 the EIC Fund and Venture to Future Fund, a vehicle of the European Investment Bank and Slovakia's finance ministry, put in €2 million, according to CC.cz and tech.eu; neither gives the split between the two. In June 2023 Taiwania Capital, a Taiwanese fund that has earmarked €200 million for Central and Eastern Europe, led a €6.2 million Series A with Crowdberry, the EIC Fund and Venture to Future Fund, announced in Taipei, according to Waste Management World and Symsite. Equity stood at €8.74 million at the end of 2023.

The accounts have shown a profit every year since: €24,545 in 2023, €118,098 in 2024 and €239,850 in 2025. Startitup reported the same 2024 figures, €9.299 million of turnover and €118,098 of profit, with Basila crediting recurring licence and service income. The 2025 figures come only from the filed accounts; no press coverage of them could be found. Cash fell to €742,028 at the end of 2025 as personnel costs rose to €4.21 million.

Why Europe Should Care

EU law is creating Sensoneo's main market. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, in force since 11 February 2025 and applicable from 12 August 2026, requires mandatory deposit return systems, according to the European Commission, and countries need to collect 90% of plastic bottles by 2029, a target the regulation extends to metal cans, Packaging Gateway reported. Every member state without a scheme needs an operator and an IT system, and a European supplier that has already built the systems for nine countries is well placed. The original SENS pitch, cutting collection costs and truck emissions through better routing, fits the EU's circular economy and climate goals as well, but there the evidence is still largely the company's own.

The Verdict

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