Crino
Crino is a German battery testing platform combining microcalorimetry, thermal socket and cycler hardware with on-site test management software. AI-driven anomaly detection runs on the instruments themselves, so measurement data never leaves the customer's premises.
What is Crino?
Crino is the battery testing offer of Crino GmbH, a Munich company spun out of the Technical University of Munich. It sits oddly in an AI directory because it is not software alone: Crino builds measurement instruments, the software that drives them, and the engineering services that surround both.
Three hardware products anchor the range. The Microcalorimeter (MIC) measures heat flow at microwatt sensitivity to expose internal short circuits and parasitic reactions that voltage and current cannot reveal; because the test is non-destructive, it can screen 100% of production cells in real time. The Thermal Socket (TS) brings pack-level thermal conditions down to a single cell, simulating passive pack materials, active cooling loops or fully custom dynamic profiles, so cells are aged under the boundary conditions they will actually meet rather than at a fixed chamber temperature. The Cell Tester (CT) performs high-accuracy charge and discharge cycling, with AI-driven anomaly detection running directly on the instrument rather than on a server.
Above the hardware sits a test management platform. It executes, monitors and analyses measurement campaigns, collecting real-time data from any hardware and presenting it through one web interface. Engineers build test sequences visually from control steps, mappings and reusable snippets, and simulate the logic before it touches a real device. Jobs then run largely unattended, with periodic specification validation and self-managing data pipelines, while AI-powered diagnostics flag anomalies on automatically aggregated data. Timestamped activity logs keep each campaign traceable, and a single barcode scan can navigate, populate data and trigger API requests.
The defining constraint is deliberate: Deployed on-site, because your data belongs to you. The platform is installed on the customer's own premises and the company advertises No cloud. Alongside the products, Crino sells services: cell aging under real pack conditions, full characterisation covering heat capacity, conductivity, entropy, OCV hysteresis and both isothermal and adiabatic calorimetry, and custom test bench design from formation through to recycling. Published capacity includes 200+ channels, ten climate chambers, 1200 A at cell level and 2 kW of cooling power.
What it does
- Detect internal short circuits and parasitic reactions before they become critical, at microwatt sensitivity
- Screen 100% of production cells in real time, without destroying them
- Reproduce real pack thermal conditions, from passive materials to active cooling loops, at single-cell level
- Run high-accuracy charge and discharge cycling with AI anomaly detection executed on the hardware
- Build test sequences visually and simulate them before deploying to real instruments
- Aggregate and visualise measurement data from any hardware in a single web interface
- Automate repetitive lab steps by linking barcode scanners to navigation, data entry and API calls
When to use Crino / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Crino is the right fit.
When to use Crino
- Cell manufacturers running end-of-line quality control who need to screen 100% of production cells without destroying them
- Incoming goods and supplier quality teams inspecting purchased cells before they reach the production line
- Battery R&D laboratories needing calorimetry, entropy and OCV hysteresis measurements at single-cell level
- Engineering teams whose data governance rules forbid sending test data to a cloud service
- Organisations scaling from a single-cell research bench to a high-channel production test field
When not to use Crino
- Buyers looking for a self-service SaaS: there is no online sign-up, no free tier and no published price
- Teams that want a hosted cloud service, since the platform is deliberately installed on the customer's own premises
- Anyone without battery cells and measurement hardware to test, as the software exists to drive physical instruments
- Developers looking for a documented public API or SDK, neither of which the site publishes
- Mobile-first users: Crino ships no iOS or Android application
How to use Crino
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Identify which strand you need: hardware instruments, the software platform, or testing services
- Open the contact form at crino.de/contact, which is the only public entry point since there is no online sign-up
- Select your interest from the form options: product demo, hardware solutions, software platform or testing services
- Supply your name, work e-mail, company and a description of your testing problem
- Alternatively write to contact@crino.de or call the Munich office on 089 20563863
- Work with the Crino team to specify the test setup, cell format and any third-party sensors or actuators to integrate
- Have the instruments and the test management software installed on your own premises
- Design your test sequences visually, using control steps, mappings and reusable snippets
- Simulate the sequence to validate its logic before running it on real cells
- Deploy, monitor the running jobs and analyse the aggregated measurement data in the web interface
Pros & Cons
Pros
- The platform is installed on the customer's premises, so measurement data never leaves the site, an explicit No cloud position
- AI anomaly detection runs on the instrument itself rather than downstream, catching problems during the test
- Hardware, software and engineering services come from a single vendor, which removes integration gaps
- Microcalorimetry is non-destructive, which makes 100% screening of production cells economically possible
- The software is advertised as hardware-agnostic, collecting real-time data from any instrument
- The vendor comes out of TU Munich battery research and claims more than ten years of experience
- Test capacity is quantified publicly: 200+ channels, ten climate chambers, 1200 A at cell level and 2 kW cooling
Cons
- No price is published anywhere on the site, so the cost cannot be estimated even approximately
- No terms and conditions are published at all, a serious gap for an industrial hardware and software purchase
- The privacy policy covers only the marketing website and says nothing about customer measurement data
- No security or quality certification is claimed, neither ISO 27001, nor ISO 9001, nor TISAX
- The Trusted by industry leaders banner names no customer and shows no identifiable reference
- There is no public technical documentation, no API reference and no accessible product demonstration
- There is no free trial and no self-service path, as every enquiry goes through a contact form
Pricing & Plans
Crino publishes no pricing. There is no pricing page on the site, the /pricing URL returning a genuine 404, and no monetary amount appears anywhere in the collected pages. No permanent free plan and no free trial are advertised. The commercial model is contact-sales: prospects choose between hardware solutions, the software platform and testing services in the contact form, and terms are established by quotation for each project. Because no entry-level figure is public, the starting price, currency and billing unit have deliberately been left empty rather than filled with a misleading number.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Crino handles your data.
GDPR overview
Crino GmbH publishes a German-language privacy policy, the Datenschutzerklarung, dated 27 February 2026, which applies the GDPR concretely rather than by slogan. It names Crino GmbH as controller, cites Article 6(1)(a), (b), (c) and (f) as legal bases, and lists data subject rights: access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection under Article 21. The competent supervisory authority is named in full, the Bayerisches Landesamt fur Datenschutzaufsicht, Promenade 18, 91522 Ansbach. Transfers to the United States, arising from website hosting at Vercel Inc., are stated to rest on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. No data protection officer and no Article 27 representative are designated, the latter being unnecessary for a company established in Germany. Note that the policy addresses the website only and never covers customer measurement data.
Who owns the data?
Crino GmbH publishes no terms and conditions, so no contractual clause defines who owns customer measurement data. What the vendor does state is a design choice: the platform is deployed on-site, and the homepage frames test data as the customer's own asset, with Your data is gold and Deployed on-site, because your data belongs to you. In practice the measurement data stays inside the customer's own infrastructure and Crino has no technical access to it. The published privacy policy covers only visitors to the website, whose contact form entries, e-mails and server logs are processed by Crino GmbH as controller.
Reuse rights
No terms of service are published, so the site sets no restriction on what customers may do with the data their tests produce. Because the platform runs on the customer's own premises, the measurement data, timestamped activity logs and workspace variables it generates remain under the customer's control and can be reused without asking Crino for permission. Nothing on the site claims any licence over that data, and nothing describes it being sent back to the vendor. The only data Crino states it processes is website data, namely contact form submissions and e-mails, which it says are not passed to third parties without consent.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Two different things must be separated here. The product is deployed on the customer's own premises, Deployed on-site, because your data belongs to you, and the homepage states plainly: No cloud. There is therefore no vendor hosting jurisdiction for measurement data, and Crino names no hosting country for the platform because in the usual sense it has none. The marketing website is a separate matter: the privacy policy states it is hosted by Vercel Inc., 340 S Lemon Ave #4133, Walnut, CA 91789, USA, and that personal data may consequently be transferred to the United States, those transfers resting on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. Crino also declares SSL/TLS encryption in transit. The hosting country fields on this record have deliberately been left empty: filling them with United States would describe where crino.de is served from, not where a customer's battery test data lives, and those are opposite answers. The IP address the domain resolves to is an anycast edge node, which likewise indicates no country of origin.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Crino.
- No contract is published: without terms and conditions, the ownership, confidentiality and permitted use of your test data rest on a commercial conversation rather than a document you can read in advance
- The No cloud promise removes a hosting risk but transfers it, since securing, backing up and patching an on-premise installation becomes the customer's own responsibility
- AI anomaly detection can breed complacency, with a green dashboard taken as proof of cell safety when the system flags only what it was built to recognise
- Barcode automation is fast and unexamined: one scan populates data and fires API calls, so a mis-scanned cell can propagate a wrong record through an entire campaign
- Heavy automation can erode the hands-on measurement judgement of junior engineers, who may never learn to read a raw thermal curve themselves
- No security or quality certification is claimed, so an auditor has nothing to rely on beyond the vendor's own statements
- The beneficial owners of Crino GmbH are not public, as the German transparency register is not freely searchable and the shareholder list sits behind a paywall
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Substantial, and not a self-service install. The software is deployed on the customer's own premises, and the hardware, whether microcalorimeter, thermal socket, cell tester or a bespoke bench, must be physically integrated, including any third-party sensors and actuators and the cell safety measures the site mentions. Crino positions this as joint engineering work, stating that it works closely with the customer's team to match exact requirements. The site publishes no system requirements, no deployment timeline and no installation guide, so the real effort can only be established during the commercial discussion.
Deployment
Behind Crino
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What does Crino actually sell?
Where is the data hosted?
How much does it cost?
Is there a free trial or a free plan?
Where is the AI in the product?
Is there a mobile app?
Does Crino offer a public API?
Who is behind Crino?
When was the company created?
In which languages is the site available?
Should you pick Crino?
Crino occupies a narrow, technically demanding niche: the measurement of lithium-ion cells, from a single research sample to a full production line. What distinguishes it from a pure software vendor is that it builds the instruments as well as the platform that drives them, with microcalorimetry sensitive enough to expose an internal short circuit before it becomes dangerous, thermal sockets that recreate real pack conditions around one cell, and cyclers that run anomaly detection on the hardware itself.
The company's second distinguishing choice is architectural. Where most AI tools assume a cloud tenancy, Crino installs its platform on the customer's own premises and says so plainly: No cloud. For a manufacturer whose test data encodes cell chemistry and process know-how, that is a substantive argument rather than a marketing line.
The reservations are commercial and contractual rather than technical. Crino publishes no price of any kind, no terms and conditions, and no security or quality certification, and its Trusted by industry leaders banner names no customer. The privacy policy covers the marketing website only, so a buyer will find nothing on the site about how customer measurement data is governed contractually. These are questions for a procurement conversation rather than blockers, but they must be asked, because the site answers none of them.
The company itself is solid on the record: Crino GmbH, registered in Munich since 17 December 2019, a Technical University of Munich spin-off backed at the outset by EXIST research-transfer funding, still trading and still publishing technical articles in 2026. Prospective buyers should expect a consultative sale, meaning a demonstration, a specification discussion and then an on-site installation, rather than a sign-up page.
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