nicelium™ on Live Television: CEO Alexandra Chișiu in Conversation with Profit.ro

nicelium™ reached Romanian national television. On May 19th, co-founder and CEO Alexandra Chișiu appeared live on PrimaTV the Profit.ro segment, speaking on camera about intelligent infrastructure, the contamination problem inside buildings, and a product built to hold the weight of regulatory scrutiny.

We're always delighted to have nicelium™ introduced to general public audiences at this scale. The coverage did not come from a press pitch. It came from the work.

Below is the full English transcript of the segment.

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The Interview

Profit LIVE: Who is nicelium and what does it do?

Alexandra Chișiu: nicelium is an innovative startup that solves the problem of waste sorting at source. We produce automatic sorting stations for interior public spaces. My husband, a mechanical engineer, and I began developing the first prototype together in 2024. To date we have secured the RON equivalent of €1.6 million through the PoCIDIF programme, co-funded by the Romanian Government and the European Union. We were selected from a highly competitive applicant pool. For us, that selection is a validation.

Profit LIVE: Where does nicelium sit relative to existing waste technology? There are AI sorting solutions in the West, yet the problem persists.

Alexandra Chișiu: The existing AI solutions operate in the industrial environment, downstream, after collection. Waste arrives at a sorting facility and gets classified there. What we do is upstream, at the moment of disposal. The unit is placed inside the building. The moment a person deposits an object, the station captures it, classifies it, and routes it to the correct fraction automatically. No sorting facility required. No user effort. The separation happens at source.

Profit LIVE: Who are your target clients?

Alexandra Chișiu: At European level: office spaces, malls, airports, railway and metro stations, interior public spaces with high footfall. These are the environments where contamination is highest and where the data we generate has the most operational value.

Profit LIVE: What is the commercial model and where are you now?

Alexandra Chișiu: We are in the pilot phase. We are looking for pilot partners willing to work alongside us in a real operating environment so we can refine the product ahead of series production. We already have active discussions with a company in Cluj-Napoca. Our first pilot will be announced soon. For the next phase, we plan to raise a new funding round at the beginning of 2027 to support scaling and European market penetration.

Profit LIVE: What is the hardest thing about building this right now?

Alexandra Chișiu: Transforming a functional prototype into a series product. That means standardisation, optimisation, and a very high level of attention to detail. The product has to hold in a real building, under real operating conditions, consistently. That takes time and it takes precision.

Profit LIVE: You launched publicly in Paris in April. What did that confirm?

Alexandra Chișiu: It was the first time the general public met the product, interacted with it, and saw it operate. The feedback confirmed what we believed about the design and the user experience. It was a strong signal. The focus remains on high-traffic interior public spaces: that is where the operational case and the data density are strongest.

Profit LIVE: What is missing from the environment for companies like yours to move faster?

Alexandra Chișiu: Two things. First, investment parity for physical products. Romania's capital has concentrated heavily in software. Hardware and deep tech require a different conversation and a different risk appetite. Second, clearer funding infrastructure. Funding guidelines are difficult for entrepreneurs to parse, often hundreds of pages, structured in ways that make it easy to make technical mistakes. Greater transparency and simpler documentation would lower the barrier without compromising accountability. I am genuinely grateful for the support we have received. And I think the process can be improved.

Profit LIVE: What is the immediate objective?

Alexandra Chișiu: Pilot locations in Romania: major malls and businesses adjacent to airports. We are reaching out directly to decision-makers. Once they see the product and understand what it does, the conversation becomes straightforward.

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Why This Moment Matters

Television has its own logic. It compresses, it simplifies, it asks the product to explain itself in minutes rather than white papers. What held in that format is the same thing that has held in every other format nicelium™ has been placed in: the product is legible.

The brief was not to build 'something clever'. It was to build something that changes a measurable thing inside a building and to build it to a standard that survives specification, procurement, audit, and time. That brief does not require simplification for a general audience. It requires precision.

Alexandra spoke about the story behind, the struggles, and the importance of the mission. She placed the unit inside the architect's brief, not the sustainability team's afterthought list.

That framing is not media training. It is the position the company has held since the first day of development.

What Comes Next

The Romanian pilot programme begins this summer. Large-scale European pilots are targeted by the end of 2026.

Each pilot client will help refine a product that goes to series production having been tested in real operating conditions. Not against a benchmark, but against a building.

The conversations are open.

Source: PrimaTV Profit.ro, broadcast live on May 19th, 2026 at 14:00 EST. Segment begins at approximately 20:00. Link to Romanian cover is here.

Access this link for pilot inquiries.

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