press release
Paris, 17 October 2022 – Innovacom, a venture capital pioneer in France, is acquiring an equity stake in Wormsensing via its Technocom3 fund. Wormsensing has developed ultra-sensitive and highly integrable sensors unique in the field of vibration measurement and suited to a wide range of innovative applications. KBC Focus Fund and CEA Investissement are also participating in this €3.5 million funding round, led by Innovacom.
A spin-off of the CEA-LETI microelectronics research centre, Wormsensing was founded in 2020 by Jean-Sébastien Moulet and Lamine Benaissa, entrepreneurs and engineers boasting solid expertise in the semi-conductor industry. The company quickly established a team of experts to develop vibration sensors that combine extreme sensitivity (improved a thousandfold), zero energy consumption (passive technology) and a remarkable integration capabilities suited to all materials and environments.
This unique offering will not only facilitate and increase use of vibration measurements, currently restricted to a small group of experienced specialists, but also broaden the scope of operation to applications previously inaccessible due to sensor cost, integration and performance issues.
This innovative technology is geared towards different market segments and concerns all industries, particularly: aerospace, automotive, transport, energy, manufacturing and robotics, as well as healthcare.
On the testing and measurement markets, the specific features of Wormsensing sensors will allow users to accelerate product design phases and reduce operating losses while also enhancing quality control and predictive maintenance. These advantages follow from both the ease of installation of Wormsensing sensors, which reduces instrumentation time, and their ability to detect more subtle signs of failure at a much earlier stage.
The company also aims to develop on other promising markets, and to provide solutions in fields such as physiological measurement (e.g. heart rate monitoring in different contexts) and human-machine interfaces (tactile or acoustic).
Wormsensing is carrying out this fund-raising initiative following two extremely successful years during which the technological innovation was confirmed and an initial sensor placed on the market. The start-up will take advantage of this additional funding to accelerate its industrial and commercial development. In particular, Wormsensing intends to finance its first manufacturing site and the start-up of its production line in France.
“The vibration measurement market has made very little progress over the past 70 years, particularly as regards sensors The prototypes we have developed have demonstrated their effectiveness, and we are eager to launch production in France with a view to increasing volumes and meeting the industrial needs of our clients”, said Jean-Sébastien Moulet, co-founder and CEO of Wormsensing.
“The technology developed by Wormsensing is revolutionising the vibration measurement market by offering ultra-sensitive sensors that can be incorporated into soft materials. With numerous and varied applications, this innovation paves the way for a number of industrial developments, making it a natural fit for our investment approach”,
explained Frédéric Humbert, Partner at Innovacom.
about Wormsensing
WORMSENSING, a spin-off from CEA-LETI, produces and sells affordable, high-performance, and highly integrable vibration sensors. The technology behind WORMSENSING solutions is a unique combination of know-hows emerging from the nuclear, semiconductor and printing industries. In practical terms, the sensor looks like an adhesive patch that can be applied to any object, allowing therefore a widespread access to vibration information, hitherto limited to the large installation diagnosis . Thanks to WORMS technology, vibration data, which contains an unparalleled depth of information, can be exploited in conventional ways for autonomous and mobile systems, but also as a design enabler of intuitive and disruptive Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI). The sensor, tested and approved for various uses in the automotive industry, is of interest to many application fields (transport, medical devices, mobile, robotics…).
Armed with more than a decade of experience in the semi conductor industry, Jean-Sébastien and Lamine, the co founders of WORMSENSING, believe that high performance materials and the result of scientific research in general should benefit to the general public and should not be limited to high end or niche applications.
