nicelium™ Featured in Ziarul Financiar: €120K Invested, EU Grant Secured, European Pilots Targeted

nicelium™ has been featured in ZF IT Generation, one of Romania's leading financial and technology publications, in a Start-up Pitch profile of co-founder Alexandra Chișiu.

where it started.

nicelium™ was first an idea. An idea that rooted in real need observed by the co-founder, Alexandra Chișiu. That was 2023.

The team at the time? 

Alexandra, a software engineer, and her husband, a mechanical engineer.

Two disciplines. One brief: build a product that matters.

"I understood I could have far greater impact as an entrepreneur. I always looked for an idea, a product I truly believed in, one with a real positive impact on the environment."
— Alexandra Chișiu, Co-founder, nicelium™

The first prototype was complete by the end of 2023, built on complementary technical expertise between the two founders. In the summer of 2024, development resumed with a sharper focus: securing a patent and applying for competitive European funding. The project was selected at national level. Funding was approved in early 2025. From that point, development accelerated. A team of five full-time researchers now works on the product.

the product. the investment. the plan.

nicelium™ is an AI-powered smart waste sorting station designed for high-traffic interior public spaces: airports, malls, universities, train stations. It replaces conventional sorting bins with a piece of architectural furniture that classifies and sorts waste automatically  no user effort, no guesswork, no misdirected fractions.

To date, the team has invested €120,000 of its own capital in product development. The technology is now patent-protected. A competitive European grant has been secured, providing confirmed R&D runway for the next 14 months and enabling a team of five full-time researchers to accelerate development toward series production readiness.

The system was launched publicly in Paris. Conversations with international airports are active. Conversations with local companies that share the vision and see the value, also active.

what the technology does.

The unit (1.20m long, 50cm wide, 70cm tall) contains three 60-litre recycling fractions. The entire intelligent system adds only 20 centimetres above the effective storage volume: a deliberate engineering constraint that keeps the unit architecturally proportionate.

The user experience is fully automated. An automatic door stays open, ready to receive any object. The moment the item is inside, the door closes. The unit captures an image, classifies the material using machine learning and AI, and routes it through the patented transport mechanism to the correct recycling fraction below.

"We have an automatic door that stays open and waits for any incoming object. It closes the moment the object is inside. The unit detects it, captures an image, and classifies it. Through our patented transport mechanism, the object reaches the correct recycling fraction in just a few seconds."
— Alexandra Chișiu, Co-founder, nicelium™

The hardware does not operate in isolation. Each unit is connected to a cloud platform. The units communicate with each other: what nicelium™ describes as swarm intelligence. A centralised dashboard maps all units across a location, displays real-time fill levels by fraction, and uses predictive algorithms to anticipate collection timing based on historical traffic patterns.

Operations managers stop guessing. They know exactly where to go, when, and why.

where nicelium™ goes next.

The immediate objective is clear: a minimum of five pilot clients across Europe by the end of 2026.

The scope is intentional. Waste management behaviour varies significantly not just between countries but within them. Pilot diversity across geographies, building typologies, and operational contexts is the mechanism for refining a product that will eventually go to series production.

The product will be available for outright purchase, rental, and leasing: a commercial structure designed to lower the barrier to entry for facilities and procurement teams.

"We want to revolutionise waste management for indoor public spaces. Right now we're focused on winning pilot clients to refine the product alongside them."
Alexandra Chișiu, Co-founder, nicelium™

the design principle.

From the beginning, the brief was not to build a smarter bin. It was to build something designers choose to include in a project from the first render. Not an afterthought accommodated in the final layout.

The result is a unit that functions as infrastructure and presents as furniture. That distinction is not aesthetic. It determines whether the product survives specification, procurement, and installation at scale.

Source: ZF IT Generation, Start-up Pitch: Alexandra Chișiu, cofondatoarea Nicelium, Ziarul Financiar, 29 April 2026. Author: Ioana Niță.

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Proiect cofinanțat de Uniunea Europeană prin Programul Creștere Inteligentă, Digitalizare și Instrumente Financiare 2021-2027 (PCIDIF), cod MySMIS 335006.Beneficiar: S.C. AI FOR GOOD SRL.