Did the EIC Accelerator Pay Off for SwissDeCode's DNA Food Tests?

SwissDeCode, a Swiss food testing start-up founded in 2016, received €2,499,700 from the EU to turn its rapid DNA tests into an automated kiosk that food companies would install on site, with a certificate for every result. The project, called BEAMitup, ran from 1 August 2020 to 31 July 2022 and cost €3,571,000 in total, according to CORDIS. The company was selected in the March 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot under Horizon 2020, listed by the European Commission among the COVID-19-related projects of that round as "SWISSDECODE SARL" with "Grant only" finance. No other company of the project is named in that list.

The project's final report says a GMO corn version of the device was piloted with a large grain trader in Ukraine and matched the manual test in 96.3% of more than 200 blind samples, and that "all milestones were achieved on time and on budget", according to the CORDIS reporting page. The same report says the deployment in Ukraine was put on hold after the war began. Four years later, the company's website no longer mentions BEAMitup. It describes SwissDeCode as a provider of on-site "testing, inspection and certification" services that "scout for the best testing kits and automated devices", with cocoa virus surveys in West Africa and A2 milk testing as its showcase work.

Where SwissDeCode Stands Now

SwissDeCode is a registered, active company. The federal register Zefix lists SwissDeCode SA in Crissier with status "existing", BDO SA as auditor, and no liquidation or bankruptcy entry; its latest publication, on 5 July 2024, records that Kenneth Lee left the board and Gerard Chia Mingsheng of Singapore joined it. Moneyhouse shows the same board and address, but gives the share capital as CHF 108,298, the figure from October 2019, while the register publications show increases to CHF 166,352.21 by September 2021. Swiss private companies do not have to publish accounts, so revenue, losses and headcount are not public.

The most recent public work is in cocoa. In February 2025 the confectioner Storck said that SwissDeCode is implementing a project in Ghana, financed by the Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa with support from Mars, Mondelez and Storck, in which its DNAFoil test for cocoa swollen shoot virus was adapted to Ghanaian virus strains and tested in field trials. The Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa lists the project for 2023 to 2027 with a budget of CHF 451,000, of which CHF 150,000 comes from the Swiss economic affairs secretariat SECO, and says it was amended in 2026 to move "from laboratory validation to large-scale field testing" across Ghana.

That is why this article classes SwissDeCode as pivoted: the company is working, but its public product today is the handheld DNAFoil kit it had before the EIC award, not the automated certification kiosk the EU paid to develop.

The Technology: DNA Tests Without the Lab

Food companies that need to prove a batch is free of GMOs, pork or a pathogen usually send samples to a laboratory and wait. "It can take a lab up to seven days to detect food adulteration," co-founder Gianpaolo Rando told the CORDIS results service. SwissDeCode's first product line, DNAFoil, is a portable DNA test that producers run themselves, described in its 2018 EU Phase 1 feasibility project as a "portable, completely self administered on-site DNA test" giving results in about 30 minutes.

BEAMitup was meant to automate this. The final report describes a cloud-connected reader and disposable microfluidic test chips: an operator inserts a food sample, presses a button and "in 20 minutes" receives a digital certificate that "will be ISO17025 compliant, certified by SwissDeCode". The business model was a fee per certificate, with the device installed at the customer, according to the CORDIS article, which quotes Rando saying SwissDeCode was "now positioned as the only certificate-as-a-service provider for food testing". That claim comes from the company and could not be checked independently. No ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation of SwissDeCode could be found in public sources.

What the EIC Award Promised, and What the Record Shows

The CORDIS objective promised a platform that would detect pathogens or pork in beef "in only 30 minutes", early-access programmes in which customers run a set number of tests per week, assays for Halomonas, milk proteins, pork and GMO corn, and an ISO 17025 certificate for each test. Because the award came in the COVID-19 round, it also promised to bring a coronavirus test, developed with the hospital in Genova, to the hospital "within few months only". It forecast a positive EBITDA of €6.8M after five years and growth to 200 employees, according to CORDIS.

The final report, covering August 2021 to July 2022, says the pork, Halomonas and A2 milk reactions "were developed and tested with good results". A grain trader signed a cooperation agreement on 12 November 2020 for a GMO test in Ukraine, and a pilot from December 2021 analysed more than 200 blind samples, one every 5 to 7 minutes, with 15 times less hands-on time than the manual test. The planned frozen-food coronavirus test was dropped when it did not become a regulatory requirement, and the team moved to surface testing with a harmless surrogate virus, reporting results in about 40 minutes and five remote demonstrations. The report says a COVID-19 test for people went through a clinical trial stage with authorities in Pakistan and Bulgaria; no result of those trials and no use at the Genova hospital has been published. The report also mentions one published patent and one further application. The grain trader and the European cleaning company that the report says would roll out the surface test are not named, and no later announcement from either could be found.

1. Integrated device with test chipsDeliveredPrototypes shown in the CORDIS report.
2. GMO corn pilotDelivered200+ samples, 96.3% concordance, company-reported.
3. Pork, Halomonas and milk assaysPartlyDeveloped, per the report; no customer use announced.
4. ISO 17025 certificate per testNot achievedNo accreditation found.
5. COVID-19 test at Genova hospitalNot achievedNo hospital use announced.
6. Commercial rollout of BEAMitupNot achievedUkraine on hold; not on the website.
7. 200 employees, €6.8M EBITDANot achievedNo staff or results published.

What SwissDeCode Achieved Alongside and After the Grant

The company's commercial news since 2020 comes from DNAFoil, not BEAMitup. In June 2021 it launched the "A2 INSIDE" label for milk from cows that carry only the A2 form of beta-casein, granted to companies that test their herds or milk with its kits, according to Dairy Industries International. In March 2022 the Japanese yogurt and milk maker Asehira Dairy became the label's first member, according to DairyReporter. Both reports rest on SwissDeCode's announcements, and the label is the company's own scheme rather than an independent standard.

In September 2021 SwissDeCode and Mars Wrigley presented an on-site test for cocoa swollen shoot disease, built on DNAFoil and Mars research, that detects the virus in leaves of trees without symptoms in under 60 minutes, according to ConfectioneryNews. CEO Brij Sahi said then that validation would end in late 2021 and the test would then be sold to farmers and institutions. Four years later the Ghana project still describes the step to nationwide field testing as the next phase, according to the Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa, and Storck wrote in 2025 that pilot testing for area-wide use was "pending". In 2020 SwissDeCode also won support from EIT Food's COVID-19 rapid response call for a DNAFoil-based coronavirus test, according to Startupticker; the amount was not published.

The Money

The register shows the investment rounds but not their size in cash. In December 2020 the shareholders approved a capital increase in cash and by converting claims of CHF 1,450,520 into preferred shares, and in September 2021 a further 1,037,973 preferred shares were issued, according to the publications listed in Zefix. The database Tech.eu records a €3.7M round from VisVires New Protein, a food tech fund based in Singapore, on 27 January 2021 and €444k from the Fondation pour l'Innovation Technologique in 2019. No press release or second source confirming the VisVires round could be found, and other databases give totals that do not match.

Why It Matters for Europe

Faster on-site testing fits several EU rules. Food with more than 0.9% GM content in an ingredient must be labelled, according to the European Commission, which is the check the Ukraine corn pilot was built for. Food fraud across borders is tracked by the EU Agri-Food Fraud Network, which links the Commission with liaison bodies in the member states and Switzerland. The cocoa work touches the EU deforestation regulation, which covers cocoa and chocolate and applies to large operators from 30 December 2026: SwissDeCode and its partners argue that early detection saves trees and so reduces forest clearing for replanting, a claim that has not been measured publicly.

The Verdict

SwissDeCode and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.