EIC Accelerator Check: Furhat Robotics and Its Social Robot Face

Most voice assistants are a speaker and a light ring. Furhat Robotics, a 2014 spin-out of Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology, built a head instead: a translucent mask lit from inside by a small projector, so that the face can change age, gender and expression in software while the robot talks, listens and follows several people with its eyes. In 2019 the European Union paid for an attempt to turn that research robot into a mass-market product.

Furhat was selected in the 9 January 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 forerunner of the EIC Accelerator, and appears under its own name, with no partner companies, in the European Commission's list of selected companies. The project, called simply Furhat, "The Human Face of AI", received an EU contribution of €2,259,600 towards a total cost of €3,228,000 and ran from 1 May 2019 to 30 April 2021, according to CORDIS. Its stated aim was to commercialise "some 10,000 robots by 2023" and reach annual revenues of €30 million.

Where Furhat Robotics Stands Now

Furhat Robotics is an active company with no insolvency or liquidation on record. The Swedish company register data republished by Hitta.se and Ratsit show annual reports filed for every year from 2015 to 2024, Samer Al Moubayed as chief executive and chair, and the company as the parent of a two-company group with a US subsidiary. North Data gives the same Stockholm address. The accounts for 2025 were not shown by either source on the date of checking.

The company still sells its robot. Its price list puts the Furhat Standard package at $35,000, €30,000 or SEK 290,000 for one robot with a one-year FurhatAI licence, and a three-robot "Furhat Lab" at $120,000. A page on its 2026 platform advertises an asynchronous real-time API and response latency below 200 milliseconds, and the company's public GitHub repository for that API was last updated in March 2026. The newsroom on its website carries no dated item after October 2024.

The Technology: A Face Made of Light

Furhat's robot is a bust. Its face is an animated 3D model projected from a unit in the robot's neck, via mirrors, onto the back of a translucent mask, as CORDIS describes it in the summary of the company's 2018 Phase 1 feasibility study. A motorised neck turns the head towards whoever is speaking, and dialogue software handles speech, gaze, head pose and facial expression with several people at once. Because the face is software, one machine can be an adult receptionist, a child or a cartoon character; the company patented that idea as "infinite robot personalities" in 2018, according to North Data's record of its filings.

The alternatives are either cheaper or more expensive. Smart speakers and on-screen avatars cost a fraction of a Furhat, but have no physical presence or eye contact. Mechanical humanoid faces, built from motors under silicone skin, can look more lifelike but cost more and cannot change identity. Furhat's bet was that a face which looks at people matters for tasks such as screening, tutoring or interviewing, and that a projected face is the practical way to provide one.

The software has changed most since the EIC project. In January 2025 the company launched FurhatAI, which uses large language models to write the robot's dialogue, includes integration with Microsoft's ecosystem and voice cloning built with ElevenLabs. "FurhatAI lets users deploy and test robot use cases within minutes, something that took months of project development and costs just a year ago," Al Moubayed said in the launch release. The launch named no customers.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The grant was meant to industrialise the robot. In the company's own release on the award, Al Moubayed said the money would scale up production towards 100 robots a month, and that "the majority of Stockholm's residents" should have met a Furhat robot by the end of 2019. The release counted Disney, ICA, BMW and MediaMarkt among its partners and put the team at about 35 people.

The final report on CORDIS, covering May 2020 to April 2021, lists what the company did with the money. It moved to "high-capacity production" through manufacturing partners and developed injection moulding to cut unit costs. It grew its developer community by more than 300% above forecast, appeared at more than 50 commercial events and launched three flagship applications: a travel assistant for Deutsche Bahn, the PETRA medical screening robot with Merck, and Tengai, a job-interview robot with the Swedish recruiter TNG. Third-party coverage confirms all three. Deutsche Bahn's DB Systel built its SEMMI travel concierge on the Furhat platform and tested it at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, according to ifun.de and futurezone. TNG's use of Tengai for real job interviews was reported by the World Economic Forum in 2019, and PETRA, a Merck and Furhat robot that screens for hypothyroidism, alcoholism and pre-diabetes, was described in July 2021 by the Spanish biotech association AseBio. How long any of the three stayed in service is not public.

What the report does not give is a sales figure. It states neither the number of robots sold nor revenue, and the company has never published either since. The filed accounts allow a rough check: Furhat's net sales were SEK 26.8 million in 2023 and SEK 15.1 million in 2024, according to Ratsit. Even if all of the 2023 net sales had come from Standard robots at today's list price of SEK 290,000, that would be about 92 robots, not thousands. The sales are a small fraction of the €30 million a year the project promised for 2023.

1. Scale up manufacturingDeliveredManufacturing partners and injection moulding, per the CORDIS report.
2. Flagship commercial applicationsDeliveredDeutsche Bahn SEMMI, TNG's Tengai and Merck's PETRA all reported by third parties.
3. Developer platformDeliveredSDK and APIs public; community growth reported at over 300% of forecast.
4. About 10,000 robots by 2023Not achievedNo unit figure published; net sales of SEK 26.8M in 2023 rule out thousands of robots.
5. €30M annual revenue by 2023Not achievedNet sales SEK 26.8M in 2023 and SEK 15.1M in 2024, per Ratsit.

The project ran its full planned 24 months, ending on 30 April 2021 as scheduled. The work it funded was done; the market it was supposed to open was not.

What Furhat Has Done Since the Grant

The largest move was in the United States. In January 2022 Furhat bought the assets of Misty Robotics, a Sphero spin-off in Boulder, Colorado, that made a small mobile social robot, for an undisclosed sum, according to Robotics 24/7 and BizWest, which reported that eight senior Misty staff would stay. The Misty website is still online and still sells the Misty II robot to schools and researchers.

Furhat has also kept winning EU research money as a consortium partner. North Data lists four further EU-funded projects that started after the EIC grant began in May 2019. The two current ones are Horizon Europe projects: SWEET, a doctoral network on socially aware service robots running from February 2025 to January 2029, in which Furhat receives €293,709.60, according to CORDIS; and AIXPERT, a project on explainable AI agents running from June 2025 to May 2028, with €490,625 for Furhat, also according to CORDIS.

Its private funding record is thin and partly contradictory. The one round confirmed by the investor itself is a $2.5 million seed round in September 2017 led by Balderton Capital with LocalGlobe, also reported by Tech.eu. The startup database Seedtable claims a Series A led by EQT Ventures in 2020 and a $25 million Series B in 2023, while Tracxn puts total funding at $4.52 million and still calls the company seed-stage. No announcement by Furhat or by any named investor of either later round was found, and the accounts do not support a $25 million raise: equity fell from SEK 33.6 million at the end of 2023 to SEK 19.6 million at the end of 2024, almost exactly the year's loss. The EIC Fund does not list the company, which is consistent with a grant-only award.

The Money

Hitta.se and Ratsit agree on the main lines of the accounts for 2021, 2023 and 2024. Total operating income, which includes capitalised development work and other income as well as sales, rose from SEK 15.8 million in 2021 to SEK 33.5 million in 2023, when the company came close to breaking even with a loss of SEK 0.8 million. In 2024 it fell to SEK 19.9 million, and the loss widened to SEK 14.1 million, including SEK 3.6 million of other financial costs, according to Ratsit. The two sources differ on 2022, so that year is left out of the chart.

The company is not short of equity relative to its size: its equity ratio was 83% at the end of 2024, with SEK 4.0 million of short-term debt and no long-term debt. But another year like 2024 would consume most of what is left. Staff numbers tell the same story. The 2024 accounts report an average of 12 employees, down from 17 in 2023 and far below the "about 35" the company named in 2019. Tracxn reports 30 employees in April 2026; no filing confirms that figure, and the register numbers cover the Swedish company only.

Why Europe Should Care

Furhat is one of a small number of European companies building the interface layer of robots: the part that talks to people. That layer is moving fast now that large language models can generate dialogue, and the EU has made applying AI in industry and public services a policy priority with its Apply AI Strategy of October 2025, described by Covington and by the robotics association euRobotics as aimed at competitiveness and technological sovereignty. Furhat's role in the EU-funded AIXPERT and SWEET consortia puts its robot into European research on explainable and socially aware AI.

The commercial picture is weaker. A Stockholm company with 12 employees is a research supplier, not the "first scalable social robotics platform" the EIC was told it would become.

The Verdict

Furhat Robotics has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.