Gondola: 7 Years After Its EIC Accelerator Grant, No US Launch

Gondola Medical Technologies makes a pair of boot-like units that press, in sequence, on the head of the big toe and the first metatarsal joint of each foot, for less than two minutes, to help people with Parkinson's disease walk. In October 2019 the European Commission selected the Swiss company in the first cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, and CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,493,920.63 for the project, GONDOLA AMPS. The proposal promised break-even in less than three years and "more than 150 highly qualified jobs" across Europe and later the USA, Canada and Japan.

Seven years later the company is still trading, its device carries a CE mark, and an 83-patient trial published in 2025 found that it made patients walk faster. But the US launch it has announced as imminent since 2016 does not appear in the FDA's public records, its website now speaks only of Parkinson's disease, and its team page names four people, against the 17 employees it reported in December 2020.

Where Gondola Stands Now

The company is registered as existing in the Swiss commercial register, with Fiduconsult Lausanne as its auditor, according to Zefix and Moneyhouse, which list Lucian Wagner, Francesco Cecchini and Stefano Tassin on the board. The last entry in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, on 7 March 2022, records the departure of a board member. Swiss limited companies of this kind do not have to publish accounts, so revenue, losses and staff numbers are not public.

Its commercial activity now centres on Italy. The company website leads in Italian with an Italian phone number, and its blog, updated in April and May 2026, is aimed at Parkinson's patients and their carers. Its team page names four people: the two founders, an operations manager and a customer service and administration employee. In a May 2026 interview with Meta Communications, Cecchini said the company had not yet worked properly on cost-benefit documentation and reimbursement, that only the Lombardy region refunds patients, at 70% of the cost under an annual regional scheme, and that elsewhere in Italy patients pay in full. In March 2025 he told the USI Startup Centre that the company's short-term goals were to raise funds, obtain reimbursement approval and hire one new team member.

The Technology: Pressure on Four Points of the Feet

Gondola calls its treatment Automated Mechanical Peripheral Stimulation (AMPS). Each foot unit has motors that push rounded tips into two points of the sole, six seconds per point, in a cycle repeated four times, according to the description of the AMBITION study published by Biopôle. The company says the stimulation sends stronger sensory signals to the spinal cord and brain and restores some of the automatic control of walking that Parkinson's erodes. A home version is fitted to each patient with 3D-scanned insoles, and a professional version is used in clinics, the CORDIS final report says.

The established treatments for walking problems in Parkinson's are dopamine drugs, deep brain stimulation and physiotherapy. Freezing of gait, when patients suddenly cannot lift their feet, often responds poorly to drugs. Gondola's pitch is a two-minute, non-invasive add-on with no drug side effects. The idea originated with Tassin, a rehabilitation specialist who noticed in the early 2000s that pressing a point on a patient's foot improved walking, the company's history page says. The EU's Horizon magazine profiled the device in October 2019, quoting a patient who said it let him return to normal life without raising his medication.

The evidence is stronger than for many devices of this kind. The largest trial, a double-blind, sham-controlled crossover study at four Italian centres, randomised 83 patients and was published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation on 8 April 2025. Gait speed rose by 0.19 m/s in the first treatment period and 0.14 m/s in the second, both above the 0.06 m/s the investigators set as the threshold for success; they described the clinical impact as moderate. The paper says the work was partly funded by the Italian Ministry of Health and does not mention the EU grant. A 2023 review of ten AMPS studies found positive effects on walking speed, stride length and stability, but called the evidence limited and asked for further well-designed randomised trials to establish long-term efficacy.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The European Commission's list of companies selected at the 9 October 2019 cut-off names Gondola Medical Technologies SA of Lugano, with GONDOLA AMPS as a grant-only project; no other company is listed for it. The grant agreement was signed on 12 February 2020, and the project ran from 1 January 2020 to 30 June 2022 under the Horizon 2020 SME instrument call, with a total cost of €3,562,743.75. CORDIS lists the Swiss company as sole beneficiary of the EU contribution, and the company's website footer credits the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme under grant agreements 836225 and 946638. The first of these was a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility project from December 2018 to March 2019. The consultancy Catalyze says in a case study that it reviewed the company's third application to the EIC Accelerator and helped manage the project afterwards.

The final report lists a new generation of home and professional devices developed and "placed on the market", CE certification work, a supply chain, a 3D foot-scanning and insole facility, firmware and a smartphone app, two planned randomised trials, and regulatory work under the new EU Medical Device Regulation and for the US market. It reports regulatory activity for the US as "advancing", not completed. Set against the proposal, the record looks like this:

1. New home and professional devices on the marketDeliveredBoth versions are sold under CE mark 0476, per the company and Meta Communications.
2. Further randomised evidencePartialThe 83-patient Italian trial was published in 2025. The company-sponsored AMBITION trial at Cologne University Hospital has status "unknown" on ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated in April 2021, with no results posted.
3. US market entryNot achievedNo Gondola record in the FDA's 510(k), PMA or establishment registration data; no US launch announced.
4. Stroke as a second marketNot achievedThe 2021 plan for a stroke study with CHUV produced no publication indexed in PubMed; the website now covers Parkinson's only.
5. Break-even within three years and 150+ jobsNot achievedFour people on the team page in 2026; in 2025 the CEO named fundraising as a priority.

What Happened After the Grant

The first year went to plan. In October 2019 the company closed a round of undisclosed size with the Lugano venture firm Privilège Management, a family office and private investors, and said it would "set up shop in the United States in 2020", according to Biopôle. It moved its registered seat from Lugano to the Biopôle science park in Epalinges, near Lausanne, in November 2019, as the gazette entries show. By December 2020 it reported 17 employees, up from 5, a third-generation home device, and new studies with Cologne University Hospital and Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), with US market entry "planned for the coming months", Startupticker reported.

In March 2021 the Fondation pour l'Innovation Technologique lent the company CHF 500,000, CHF 200,000 upfront and the rest tied to milestones, to expand its clinical research team. Biopôle's announcement put the company's funding since 2019 at €4 million in equity and loans, including the €2.5 million EU grant. In June 2021 Venturelab picked Gondola for its first Venture Leaders Medtech roadshow to Boston, and in November 2021 the company announced a study of the therapy's mechanism with Mount Sinai's Abilities Research Center in New York, according to its press release. That study was withdrawn in January 2023 with no patients enrolled.

No funding round, new investor or financing after the 2021 loan could be found. The company's share capital has not changed since December 2021, according to the register.

The American Question

The US has been Gondola's next step for a decade. In December 2016 the FDA accepted the device into its Expedited Access Pathway, and the company expected to complete the tasks for US market authorisation "within the next 12 months", Startupticker reported. Today two profiles, on Top 100 Swiss Startups and in the May 2026 interview, say the device has FDA Breakthrough Device designation. Both rest on the company's own statements; the FDA does not publish the names of designated devices, so the designation could not be checked independently. A designation is not a marketing authorisation, and no clearance or approval for the device appears in the FDA's public databases.

Why Europe Should Care

More than 7 million people in the EU live with Parkinson's disease or long-term disability after stroke, the CORDIS objective says, and the Commission's Healthier Together initiative for 2022 to 2027 has a strand on mental health and neurological disorders. A home therapy that helps people keep walking fits that goal, and the EU paid most of the cost of bringing it to market. Gondola's case shows the gap that grant money does not close: a device can have CE marking and trial evidence and still reach few patients if health systems do not pay for it and neurologists do not prescribe it. The company's own admission that it has not yet built the cost-benefit case for reimbursement points to where the work remains.

The Verdict

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