Nuada's Hand Exoskeleton: What the EIC Accelerator Paid For

The Nuada Glove looks like an ordinary textile glove strapped to a wrist unit. Inside the textile run artificial tendons; the wrist unit tensions and locks them, so a hand that has lost its strength can close around an object and keep holding it without the muscles doing the work. Nuada, a start-up from Braga in northern Portugal, told the European Commission in 2019 that the glove could support "up to 40kg" and cost about a quarter of rival electromechanical gloves, according to the project summary on CORDIS.

The Commission selected the project in the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 cut-off of 3 April 2019, the Horizon 2020 forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator. The official list of winners names NUADA of Braga, with the project title "YOUR LIFE. HANDS-ON.", as the only company in its project. The grant agreement gave it an EU contribution of €1,719,375 towards a total cost of €2,456,250, for a project that ran from 1 September 2019 to 30 September 2022, according to CORDIS.

Where Nuada Stands Now

The public record on Nuada's present is thin, and partly worrying. In September 2024 the company changed its legal form from a private limited company (Lda) to a public limited company (S.A.), moved its registered seat from Braga to the young entrepreneurs' association building in Porto, appointed new board members, and registered a capital increase, a capital reduction and a second increase, according to the filings listed by Racius and the change log of eInforma, which also records the former name NUADA, LDA. Who holds the shares after that restructuring is not public.

Both registers list annual accounts up to 2023 and none for 2024. eInforma's change log adds credit-risk updates in October and December 2025 and an "incident" entry dated 27 May 2026 without saying what it was. A search of the Portuguese courts' insolvency publications on Citius, by NIF and by name across all courts and dates, returned no insolvency, PER or other restructuring notice for Nuada on 8 October 2026, so what the May 2026 incident was remains unexplained. Revenue, losses and staff for any year sit behind paid reports and could not be checked for this article.

The company's website still sells the glove, offers demonstrations and trial sessions, and its pages were last edited between April and October 2025, according to the site's own sitemap. In 2022 it won a World Summit Award in the health and well-being category. The site names eight distribution partners: Neuro Rehab Recovery, Handspring and Spectrum Ergonomics in the United States, Rahana Life in the United Kingdom, OrtoPed in Canada, Hjelpemiddelpartner in Norway, HBR Innovation in France and Europharma in Portugal. Neuro Rehab Recovery describes itself as the glove's exclusive North American distributor and quotes no price. With no dated news, filings or announcements from the last 12 months, the status of the company is recorded here as unknown.

How the Glove Works

The competing products Nuada named in its EIC application are electromechanical gloves, in which a motor does the pulling. Nuada's patent, filed in Portugal in January 2014 and granted in the United States as US 10,603,190 in March 2020 and in Europe as EP 3099275 B1 in October 2021, describes a different idea: artificial tendons connected to a tensioning system that can lock the joint. The user closes the hand as far as they can, the system locks the tendons, and the grip holds without further muscle effort or a motor holding the load. The company calls this a quasi-passive exoskeleton in its final EIC report.

That design is the claimed advantage over the two rivals CORDIS names, the SEM Glove and the glove developed by NASA and General Motors: less energy, a smaller unit and stronger static support. The trade-off is stated plainly in the glove's own FAQ: the value is greatest when an object is held for a long time and lower for quick movements such as typing.

The numbers attached to the product have shifted. CORDIS, the GoParity loan pages and the user manual (version 1.0.0) all give a maximum support of 40 kg; the manual lists a weight of 500 g. The website now promises 20 kg and "less than 300g", and its FAQ gives 270 g. Whether this reflects a redesigned, lighter glove or a more cautious claim is not explained anywhere public.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The Phase 2 project was the second EU grant for the glove. A Phase 1 feasibility study (CORDIS 790310) received €50,000 for six months from December 2017; its report names Volkswagen and Hospital Cova da Beira among the pilot partners, says one patent had been submitted and three more would follow "after the next round of investment", and presents industry and healthcare as the two first markets.

The Phase 2 objective repeated that dual pitch: an injury-prevention glove for workers in manufacturing and retail, and a support and rehabilitation device for people with stroke, arthritis or other hand conditions. The final report, for the period to 30 September 2022, lists four results: one granted patent and nine further developments "possible to patent", two pilots with 44 and 63 patients, product development that "reached market readiness, enabling the company to start preparing production", and partnerships for business development. CORDIS publishes no deliverables and no sales data, and the report does not say whether the project ended on its original schedule.

1. Market-ready gloveDeliveredA manual, distributors in six countries and a sales page on nuada.pt.
2. Clinical proof in patientsDelivered63-patient pilot published in Cureus, October 2023; the 44-patient pilot is not published.
3. Patent protectionDeliveredEP 3099275 B1 granted in October 2021, during the project.
4. Industrial injury-prevention gloveNot deliveredThe FAQ says the company sells "for the healthcare market only"; the industry version "will be available later".
5. Volume production and salesUnverifiedNo unit numbers, revenue or customer count published.

The EIC money bought a product that exists and a clinical paper that supports it. It did not produce the industrial glove that Nuada itself had called its beachhead market. Volkswagen's Autoeuropa factory, which GoParity's campaign pages cite as an active pilot, has not announced any purchase, and no other industrial customer is public. That gap is the reason the project is rated partly delivered here.

The Clinical Evidence

The pilot study, by physicians at the Centro de Reabilitação do Norte in Vila Nova de Gaia together with two Nuada employees, tested the glove on 63 patients between May 2022 and March 2023, according to the paper in PubMed Central. About a third had a spinal cord injury and a third a stroke; the rest had Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barré syndrome and other conditions. Patients did six grasping exercises with and without the glove; 98% improved in at least one.

The study is a single-session test in a controlled setting, with no control group and with the company's CEO among the authors, who declare their employment. The paper itself recommends testing in real-world, continuous use. It shows the glove helps patients hold objects; it does not show long-term recovery or that patients keep using it.

The Money Around the Grant

Beyond the two EU grants, little of Nuada's funding is documented. TechCrunch reported that the founders had won Microsoft's Imagine Cup and raised seed money when they presented at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2017, and the HAX hardware accelerator lists it in its tenth cohort. In 2018 Quinaz told ECO that the company needed sums "no longer compatible" with Portuguese ticket sizes. No equity round with an amount and named investors has been published since. Nuada is not an EIC Fund portfolio company; its award was grant only.

The firmest figures come from GoParity, a Portuguese lending platform. The first campaign, Helping Hands Nuada, raised €150,000 as a six-month bridge loan at 5% so that the company could "continue its activity" until the EU's intermediate payment, then expected in December 2020. A second campaign raised €200,000 at 5% over nine months, and a third €210,000 at 4.5% over twelve months, rated B- for risk. The third page says the first loan was repaid in full with interest; repayment of the later two is not shown publicly.

Why Europe Should Care

The glove sits where two EU policies meet. The Commission's strategic framework on health and safety at work 2021 to 2027 makes better prevention of work-related accidents and diseases one of its three objectives; musculoskeletal injuries in manual work are the industrial market Nuada pitched first. The strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities, extended by the Commission in May 2026, calls for affordable assistive technologies, the market Nuada actually reached.

Soft exoskeletons are still a small field, and a European maker with granted patents in Europe and the United States is the kind of company the EIC was set up to keep in Europe. But four of Nuada's six listed distribution countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Norway, are outside the EU.

The Verdict

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