Success story – EIC Accelerator company Senecio selected as part of the official delegation to the COP29

EIC-backed Senecio Robotics, a pioneering company in the field of automated mosquito control, will be featured in November’s COP29 Climate Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, alongside other 19 climate tech companies. 

The participants were carefully selected by the Israel Innovation Authority, the Foreign Trade Administration - Ministry of Economy & Industry, and the Israel Export Institute מכון היצוא to showcase the impact of Israeli innovation on the global climate community.  

The announcement comes at the end of a fruitful year for the Israeli company, which –backed by the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator funding and harnessing the collaboration with the world’s largest pest control company, Rentokil Initial – it has deployed its AI-powered SIT HUBs to a total of seven municipalities in Israel. 

About the latter achievement, Hanan Lepek, CEO at Senecio, stated “I am proud to have contributed to this increase in safety and comfort for thousands of people in Israel and look forward to providing the same service to people across the world.”  

The benefits of RoboSIT’s alternative to traditional mosquito control  

Through the EIC-funded RoboSIT project, coordinated by Senecio, its experts from aerospace and defense developed an AI-based robotic system for the automation of key aspects of Sterile Insect Technique (SIT).  

While traditional SIT techniques have demonstrated to be successful in releasing sterile insects in vast numbers and mating them with wild females without giving rise to offspring, these traditional methods require experts to manually identify and pool hundreds of insects and send them for pathogen analysis.  

Senecio’s turn-key robotic solution adds to the environmental benefit of traditional SIT techniques – namely, that of reducing the usage of insecticides and of targeting only specific mosquito species – the perk of eliminating labour-intensive bottlenecks deriving from the identification, sorting and packing of male mosquitoes. 

Besides resulting in reduced operational costs and optimised reaction times to vector-borne disease outbreaks, this solution could save societies millions of euros in healthcare costs.  

Expanding the reach of its innovative services 

Thanks to the support of the EIC-backed RoboSIT project, Senecio has developed a viable, market-ready solution which has recently seen a growing demand from municipalities in Israel willing to reduce mosquito populations in public and private yards to the benefit of thousands of residents.  

With proven success and growing demand, the following Israeli municipalities have partnered with Rentokil Initial to implement Senecio’s cutting-edge mosquito control program in 2024:  

• Modi'in 

• Zihron Yaakov 

• Sde Varburg 

• Kibbutz Eyal 

• Nir Eliyahu 

• Atlit 

• Beer Yaakov 

With one of its goals being to help significantly reduce the use of pesticides in agriculture – 2.5m tonnes of which are currently used around the globe – Senecio Robotics is now ready to expand its services to new potential local partners. 

To get a closer look to the EIC-funded project and get more insights, read the press release.

Additional information 

RoboSIT project is EIC Accelerator beneficiary. Before being selected for the EIC Accelerator, the company received funding through EIC Accelerator’s predecessor, SME Instrument Phase 2.