Meet the 10 Startups Decarbonising Transportation, Logistics & Construction

On 13 November, the first HARD2SCALE cohort pitches online. Here’s who they are, how they were selected, and why they’re worth two hours of an investor’s morning.

The gap

Transportation, logistics and construction sit among the hardest sectors in Europe to decarbonise, and they are now among the most heavily regulated. CBAM is reshaping the economics of cement and steel. FuelEU Maritime and the extension of the EU ETS to shipping have put a price on marine fuel. ETS2 will do the same for road transport fuels. For the first time in a long time, operators in these industries have compliance budgets rather than innovation budgets — which is to say, real budgets, with deadlines attached. The technology to meet that demand largely exists. What is missing is the bridge between a validated prototype and an industrial customer, and between an industrial customer and a term sheet.

cohort Selection

The cohort came out of an open competitive call, evaluated by a committee drawn from the consortium partners and external accelerator partners.

The maturity threshold was set deliberately high for an accelerator. Applicants needed a working prototype with demonstrated impact for a named industry, evidence that industry stakeholders had engaged with them, and in most cases some seed or public funding already secured. Idea-stage applications were screened out. The selection criteria explicitly weighted whether the consortium could produce a measurable effect on that company’s access to funding and markets — which, in practice, meant favouring companies close enough to commercial reality that six months could move them.

What came through is ten companies from nine countries: Spain, Poland, Greece, Portugal (two), Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany and the Netherlands. Half are based in countries classified as moderate or emerging innovators.

Meet the ten Startups

Construction & Heavy Industry

Advanced Material Simulation — Spain
Engineering simulation is complex, expensive and out of reach for most industrial companies. AMS solves this with AI-driven simulation agents that automate the full modelling and optimisation workflow, combining physics-based simulation, optimisation algorithms, machine learning and LLMs. Engineers can explore thousands of design alternatives and cut material usage by up to 30% — directly relevant to construction, advanced manufacturing and materials engineering.

AREYLight AI Solutions — Poland
An AI-powered smart site operations platform for construction and heavy equipment environments. Cranes, forklifts, generators, site lighting and other critical field assets are connected through IoT sensors and gateways, turning raw telemetry into live dashboards, fault alerts, utilisation tracking, fuel and energy monitoring, and AI-driven maintenance recommendations. Hardware-agnostic and modular, built for fast pilots and multi-site rollout.

Aperion Robotics — Greece
CAD-independent robotic welding, combining real-time 3D reconstruction, intelligent seam detection and an interaction model that lets operators define welding paths directly in the workspace. The result is drastically reduced programming time and consistent welds in high-mix, low-volume settings such as shipbuilding, heavy metal fabrication and industrial maintenance — the environments where welding automation has historically failed to pay for itself.

Infinite Foundry — Portugal
Real-time digital twin software that helps industries monitor, simulate and optimise complex operations. The platform fuses 3D models, live sensor and operational data, and physics-based AI into a virtual replica of industrial infrastructure, enabling predictive maintenance and energy efficiency gains without replacing existing assets. Already deployed in manufacturing; joined HARD2SCALE to expand into transport and logistics infrastructure.

Transportation & Logistics

Dymaxa — Austria
Truck aerodynamics, aimed at cutting fuel consumption and emissions in conventional trucks by 10% while improving the range of electric ones. The side-skirt solution starts at €1,600 — four to five times cheaper than incumbent products — which changes the payback maths for fleet operators rather than just the emissions figure.

BraveX — Romania
Fixed-wing and VTOL drones designed and manufactured end to end, from raw composite materials through to proprietary piloting software. Built for endurance missions: up to 4 hours of autonomous flight, 250 km range, 7 kg payload, operating from −10°C to +55°C. Applications across transport, logistics, border security, infrastructure monitoring and civil intervention.

Storming Universe — Portugal
A long-range unmanned cargo aircraft carrying up to 100 kg over distances of up to 2,000 km, with short take-off and landing from unpaved runways of roughly 70 metres. Targeting middle-mile logistics — the leg between regional hubs and remote destinations where trucks are slow and conventional aviation is uneconomic.

RedGet — Bulgaria
An AI-powered SaaS platform automating Scope 3 vessel GHG emissions calculation and reporting for ports and terminal operators. A compliance-by-design product arriving as maritime reporting obligations tighten across the EU — the kind of regulatory tailwind that turns a nice-to-have into a line item.

ICODOS — Germany
Cost-competitive clean methanol for shipping. A patented hybrid process merges CO₂ capture and methanol synthesis into a single unit, cutting capture energy demand by over 70% and allowing dynamic operation on intermittent wind and solar power. ICODOS moved from lab (TRL 4) to operating pilot (TRL 6) in under three years and is now building a 150 t/y demonstration plant.

PhoMyx — Netherlands
A non-combustive Solid Oxide Fuel Cell platform integrated with a cascading thermodynamic recovery cycle, protected by two provisional patents. By capturing high-grade thermal energy to drive a secondary power cycle, it reaches 70% net electrical efficiency — close to double the industry standard. Delivered as 30 kW modular Power Racks that retrofit into existing engine rooms, letting shipowners move to green ammonia without a newbuild and cut OpEx by 35%.

👉 Fuller profiles are available in Meet the Startups Powering the First HARD2SCALE Cohort.

Agenda

 13 November 2026 ·  10:00–12:00 CET ·  Online (Zoom) 

Time (CET)	Session
10:00 – 10:10	Welcome & programme introduction — the accelerator, the selection process, and how the 1:1 matchmaking works
10:10 – 11:00	Pitch block 1: Construction & Heavy Industry — Advanced Material Simulation, AREYLight AI Solutions, Aperion Robotics, Infinite Foundry (5 min pitch + 4 min Q&A each)
11:00 – 11:05	Break
11:05 – 11:55	Pitch block 2: Transportation & Logistics — Dymaxa, BraveX, Storming Universe, RedGet, ICODOS, PhoMyx (5 min pitch + 4 min Q&A each)
11:55 – 12:00	Close

1:1 meetings

After the event, you tell us which founders you want to meet. We schedule the meetings, and send you a personalised agenda with times and links.

What HARD2SCALE is

HARD2SCALE is a cross-border acceleration programme funded under Horizon Europe (Grant Agreement 101193674). The consortium is eight organisations, deliberately split: four from innovation ecosystems the European Commission classifies as emerging or moderate, and four from leading ones. The programme’s entire design premise is moving companies between those two groups.

Over the project’s lifetime it will accelerate 40 digital and deep-tech startups across four cohorts, each cohort focused on one industrial vertical. Cohort 1 is Transportation, Logistics & Construction. Three more follow.

Each cohort runs six months and roughly fourteen structured touchpoints, organised around two tracks:

• Go-to-market — corporate matchmaking, open innovation workshops with industry stakeholders, and support in converting interest into pilots
• Go-to-funding — investment readiness, due-diligence preparation, investor matchmaking, and access to non-dilutive public funding

Questions? Reach us at hello@hard2scale.eu.