Cyprus-based deep-tech startup EMBIO Diagnostics has secured a high-profile ally as it scales up globally: basketball star Sasha Vezenkov invests in EMBIO Diagnostics and at the same time becomes brand ambassador for airbeld™, the company’s smart indoor air quality monitor.

The Bulgarian–Cypriot Olympiacos forward, EuroLeague MVP and former NBA player is not just lending his name. After using airbeld at home, he decided to join the company as a private investor, aligning his post-basketball business plans with a fast-growing technology built in Nicosia.

The new partnership is launched through a campaign titled “Be In Control of What You Breathe”, centred around a video where Vezenkov highlights how invisible indoor pollutants can affect health, energy levels and long-term well-being.

Vezenkov has been following EMBIO Diagnostics’ progress for years before deciding to invest. He describes discovering airbeld first as a user, using it as a practical way to look after his family’s health.

The player has repeatedly stressed that the device gives him the ability to understand what his family is breathing and to act immediately – whether that means airing out a room, adjusting air conditioning or identifying the cause of recurring headaches, fatigue or migraines. For him, having this kind of insight and control over indoor air is “real power”.

That personal experience made it, as he has noted, “pointless to be just an ambassador” for something he believes in so strongly. Instead, he chose to stand next to the team as a long-term investor, joining EMBIO’s journey from consumer to shareholder.

For Constantinos Loizou, Founder and CEO of EMBIO Diagnostics, the partnership with such a high-visibility athlete goes beyond marketing. The company’s goal, he underlines, is to bring scientifically validated technology into people’s homes, giving them data, knowledge and tools to improve their daily lives. Collaborating with Vezenkov creates, in his words, a strong alliance aimed at making air quality part of every family’s everyday care routine.

Founded in 2016 in Nicosia, EMBIO Diagnostics has become one of the standout examples of Cypriot technological innovation. The company designs and manufactures portable, biosensor-based and digital rapid diagnostic devices, with applications ranging from:

• Food safety (pesticides, salmonella, listeria)

• Environmental monitoring

• Indoor air quality

• Maritime and medical technology

Alongside airbeld™, the company’s portfolio includes B.EL.D™, a platform for rapid diagnostics in food safety, environmental testing and healthcare.

EMBIO has built a fully vertically integrated R&D and production pipeline, turning research outputs into industrial-grade devices made in Cyprus. This approach has attracted major clients in Greece and Cyprus, including Coca Cola HBC, Cybarco, Eurobank Cyprus, Nicosia Mall and others, which use airbeld in their facilities for rapid and meaningful analysis of indoor air quality.

On the funding side, EMBIO raised €1 million in seed funding in 2021, led by ASBIS Enterprises, a major IT and IoT solutions provider across EMEA. Three years later, it completed a €2.5 million seed-plus round, led by Kinisis Ventures, with Vezenkov participating as the previously undisclosed “famous athlete investing in Greece”. The capital is being used to accelerate international sales and large-scale deployment.

The technology has received strong validation: development of the devices is supported by the Research and Innovation Foundation of Cyprus, and airbeld™ Eos has earned the “Works with WELL™” distinction from the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), aligning it with one of the world’s strictest standards for healthy indoor environments.

Today, EMBIO reports export activity in more than 10–15 countries, from the USA and Saudi Arabia to the UAE and Vietnam, and is currently working on a more systematic entry into the US market through strategic partnerships. The company has also appeared at GITEX Global to expand in Arab markets, while Loizou has been recognised locally as a leading technology business figure in Cyprus.