Inside TiHive: How a French Deeptech Startup Is Revolutionizing Quality Control, One Diaper at a Time

There's an uncomfortable truth about the baby products industry that most parents never consider: the quality control systems ensuring their infant's diaper won't leak are, in many cases, woefully inadequate.

For decades, manufacturers have relied on sampling: pulling a product off the line every few hours, destroying it in a lab, and hoping that a single data point represents the millions of products made in between.

It's this antiquated approach that TiHive, an eight-year-old deeptech startup based in Grenoble, set out to disrupt. After years of development, commercial validation, and measured growth, the company just closed an €8 million funding round from Karista, Wind, and the EIC Fund to accelerate its global expansion.

"Sampling just simply doesn't work. It's really old school," said Hani Sherry, TiHive's CEO and co-founder. What TiHive brings to the table, he explained, is "really 100% quality and process control using a deep tech technology."

From PhD Research to Industrial Reality

The story of TiHive begins, as many deeptech ventures do, in the academic trenches.

Sherry completed his PhD about a decade ago, focusing on terahertz waves on silicon, a specialized area of microelectronics dealing with a mysterious and underutilized part of the electromagnetic spectrum. These waves, sitting between microwave and infrared frequencies, possess an almost magical ability: they can see through materials, revealing what's hidden inside without causing damage.

But transforming academic research into an industrial application required more than scientific expertise.

In 2017, Sherry teamed up with Carlos Prada, who brought a PhD in computer science and an MBA in Finance to the partnership. Together, they founded TiHive with a clear philosophy: they wanted to be "a deep tech solution provider" focused on creating "tangible and measurable economic, ecological and societal impact," Sherry said.

The path to finding their killer application wasn't straightforward. The founders explored aerospace applications, composite materials in the automotive industry, and various other use cases. "We really tried so many different things, and I have to tell you, it was a little bit by chance that we stumbled upon this industry," Sherry admitted.

The breakthrough came through conversations. Not with engineers or technical experts, but with everyday people. Friends, family members, mothers, talking about...diapers.

"They say to you, yeah, yeah, the number of times that it leaked, you know," Sherry recalled. These casual complaints revealed a massive, unaddressed problem in an industry producing billions of products annually.

Seeing the Invisible at Industrial Speed

What TiHive developed is deceptively complex. At its heart are proprietary semiconductor chips, tiny CMOS devices that can generate and detect terahertz waves at unprecedented speeds.

Scientists call terahertz frequencies "the terahertz gap" because, historically, no electronic devices resembling consumer technology could manipulate these waves effectively. Previous terahertz systems resembled bulky X-ray machines, impractical for fast-moving production lines.

"What TiHive did is that we went from this chip, which is really super tiny, and we made huge chips. We industrialized them," Sherry said.

The company created different frequencies and chip variations, paired them with specialized optics, and then achieved something unprecedented: the world's first multi-camera terahertz system.

This modular approach proved crucial. Production lines vary wildly in width and configuration, processing products from narrow to very wide. Rather than custom-engineering solutions for each scenario, TiHive created a single standardized camera that could be replicated and placed side-by-side, with software synchronizing everything to generate cohesive images.

Building the hardware was only half the battle. Deploying these sensitive systems in actual factories — environments filled with dust, oil, flying cellulose fluff, and other contaminants — demanded years of additional development. "That's where we actually worked really hard the last three years, developing algorithms so that we can also calibrate our systems, developing new devices that would protect our device," Sherry says.

The result is what the company calls a "super full stack"—complete mastery of hardware and software, from nanotechnology to artificial intelligence.

Remarkably, this was accomplished by a team of just 14 people.

Why Diapers Matter More Than You Think

The choice to focus on absorbent hygiene products—baby diapers, adult incontinence products, feminine care items—might seem less than glamorous, but the economics are staggering.

The global industry produces billions of these products weekly, operating on thin margins in a brutally competitive market.

Inside each diaper are super-absorbent polymers, specialized materials that soak up liquids. These polymers must be present in sufficient quantity and distributed properly, or the product fails, leading to leakage, potential rashes, and damaged brand reputation.

"Bad quality diapers mean brands that are impacted," Sherry noted, with cost impacts that "can go up to millions of dollars, only because of scrapping, only because of losing brand image."

Traditional sampling methods couldn't catch problems in real-time. A defect discovered hours after it started meant hours of potentially ruined product. TiHive's system, integrated directly onto production lines and connected to both machines and the cloud, measures thousands of products every minute, catching issues immediately.

The company secured its first major customer—a European leader in adult incontinence products—about four years ago, before going on to work with two American multinationals in the hygiene sector.

"We deployed the first line. It worked. Everybody was surprised," Sherry said.

The surprise wasn't just about detecting defects. The system revealed insights about machine efficiency and uptime that manufacturers hadn't previously accessed. A single percentage point of uptime improvement, they discovered, translated to one to two million dollars in additional production value.

Today, TiHive is nearing 1 billion products measured and has built the world's largest database dedicated to diaper quality, analyzing millions of products weekly, Sherry said. The environmental impact is equally impressive: a single equipped production line can save up to 300 tons of super-absorbent polymers annually, equivalent to 1,500 tons of avoided CO₂ emissions.

A Business Model Built for Scale

TiHive's commercial approach addresses a critical hurdle in selling expensive technology to low-margin industries: the upfront cost barrier. Rather than requiring capital expenditures with multi-year payback periods, the company operates on an annual subscription model bundling equipment access with AI-powered analytics, monitoring services, and operational support.

"The return on investment is very, very fast, so it's within a couple of months or three months," Sherry said. Customers pay at the start of each year, see rapid payback, and then continue generating value. "Your system is actually producing value as it goes," he added.

This model resonated with investors. The €8 million round is TiHive's first true equity raise beyond government grants and support from entities like Bpifrance and the EIC Fund.

It comes at a pivotal moment.

"Last year we hit our product-market-fit validation," Sherry said, evidenced by multiple global industrial groups either purchasing systems or deep in the buying process.

Beyond Diapers: A Multi-Industry Future

With commercial validation achieved and funding secured, TiHive is targeting adjacent markets where the core technology requires minimal modification. The hardware remains the same; the software interprets data differently.

"That's really a change of philosophy in the world of terahertz systems," Sherry said, contrasting TiHive's approach with traditionally hardware-driven solutions.

Near-term targets include textiles and leather, where the technology can measure material thickness and ensure quality, potentially reducing raw material waste by 10-20%. The recycling industry presents another compelling application: identifying whether textiles are pure cotton or mixed with polyester, critical information for effective recycling, Sherry said.

Longer-term opportunities span agriculture (inspecting seeds and crops), aerospace (non-destructive verification of critical materials), and even space applications, including situational awareness and debris detection.

The company is also focused on operational excellence. Specifically, radically reducing deployment timelines.

"If I sign a contract, I'd like to be able to deploy it in a month," Sherry said, outlining an ambitious milestone. Achieving this requires hiring, including an industrial director, and 10x-ing production capacity while maintaining quality.

The European Deeptech Advantage

TiHive's expansion comes at a moment when European technological sovereignty is a policy priority. The company produces, assembles, and validates its systems in Europe, maintaining its industrial roots while deploying internationally. Current installations span the Netherlands, the United States, Italy, and Greece, with aggressive expansion planned across Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific.

Beyond the technology and innovation, Sherry said the company's success has been driven by its collaborative approach. He wants customers to see TiHive as a partner in continuous improvement, rather than just a vendor.

"One of the big brands in the States, every time we meet them, they say, 'Hey guys, we really love working with you, because you're not like an OEM or a normal company... where the relationship is only pure financial. With you, we really feel that we can innovate, we can improve," he said. "We are a product and solutions company, not only a technology company."