Woodoo: Lighting Up Wood With EIC Accelerator Money, Then Pivoting

Woodoo, a Paris company founded by the architect Timothée Boitouzet, removes lignin, the natural glue between wood fibres, and refills the wood with a polymer, which makes it stronger, more durable and, in thin sheets, translucent. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's October 2020 cut-off it was selected with blended finance for "Woodoo Augmented Wood - scaling up translucent wood for sustainable buildings and vehicles", according to the European Commission's list of selected companies, which names SAS WOODOO as the only beneficiary of the project. The grant agreement brought an EU contribution of €574,827.75 towards a total cost of €821,182.50, from 1 March 2021 to 28 February 2023, according to CORDIS. The project report names three goals: a prototype wooden touchscreen, secured component suppliers and certification.

Five years later the company's website no longer leads with translucent wood for cars. Its home page presents STACK, a facade and structural material made from low-grade hardwood, as its flagship, according to Woodoo's website, and in June 2026 Bouygues Construction announced that the two companies were starting the industrial production phase of STACK with a first batch of 1,000 m³ of structural elements, according to a Bouygues Construction press release. The augmented wood process is the same; the product and the market have changed. This article counts that as a pivot.

Where Woodoo Stands Now

SAS Woodoo is active, with no insolvency proceedings in its record. It is registered as a simplified joint-stock company in Paris under the code for wood impregnation, with two open establishments and a staff band of 20 to 49 employees for 2024, according to the French company directory. Its legal notices show annual accounts filed for every year up to 2025, a move of the registered office in October 2022, a change in management in December 2022 and two capital increases in 2022, according to BODACC. North Data records Timothée Boitouzet as president from 7 September 2016 to 20 December 2022, followed by Widukind Sàrl, and share capital of €6,376,406 since June 2022. Boitouzet still signs as "CEO and founder of Woodoo" in the June 2026 Bouygues release.

The partnership with Bouygues was signed at VivaTech on 11 June 2025 and covers studies, tests, certification and then deployment of STACK, with 10,000 m³ planned on Bouygues Construction projects, equal to 20,000 m³ of reinforced concrete, depending on the first trials, according to Construction21. Two outlets put a value on it. L'Essentiel de l'Éco calls it a €32 million contract, and the Swiss daily Le Temps described it on 25 October 2025 as a €32 million supply contract for 10,000 m³ over three years, according to the article as reproduced by Woodoo. Bouygues itself names no value and calls the 10,000 m³ a target beyond the first 1,000 m³ batch, so the firm volume is the 1,000 m³. The release also says the ATEx, the French experimental technical approval needed for the structural use, is pending.

The Technology: Wood Without Its Lignin

Woodoo's process removes lignin and impregnates the remaining cellulose structure with monomers that polymerise inside the wood, creating stronger bonds between the fibres. An early CORDIS summary describes the result as translucent wood "three times stiffer than natural wood", more durable and water and fire resistant, according to the POLYWOOD fact sheet. TechCrunch described the same steps in 2023 and reported three materials: Woodoo Slim, a translucent and touch-sensitive panel for dashboards and buttons; an animal-free leather alternative; and a structural material meant to replace steel, according to TechCrunch.

The translucent product reached a catalogue. Woodoo's SLIM catalogue, uploaded in October 2024, sells a 0.6 mm poplar or tulipwood veneer with a light transmittance of 10% to 21% in internal tests, for wall panels, signage and LED panels in shops and offices. It lists test results against Mercedes-Benz (MBN) and German automotive (VDA 278) standards and a fire class D rating on an 18 mm backing. The catalogue markets SLIM for interiors, not as a car component, and the former SLIM page now shows the STACK range.

STACK is a different material: thick, load-bearing and not translucent. Woodoo says STACK Structure is "7x stronger than concrete" and STACK Facade lasts "10 years without greying", per its website; L'Essentiel de l'Éco reports 20 years without greying. These are company claims; no independent test report is public. Woodoo prefers fast-growing poplar, a species that otherwise goes into crates, according to Construction21 and a 2025 Les Echos article. Le Temps names InventWood of the United States as one of few direct competitors.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

The EIC award was Woodoo's third Horizon 2020 grant. It followed POLYWOOD, a €79,375 grant for a research associate from September 2017 to August 2018, and an SME Instrument Phase 2 project with an EU contribution of €2,272,044.25 from September 2018 to August 2020, according to CORDIS. That earlier project's final report says Woodoo developed an augmented wood dashboard with smart surfaces for user interaction.

The EIC Accelerator pilot project was to build on that dashboard. Its CORDIS objective lists five outcomes: scaled-up production output, lower production time, cost and scrap, "a series auto component", contracts for large-scale commercialisation and private investment. The final report for the period to February 2023 narrows this to three objectives, a prototype wooden touchscreen, secured component suppliers and certification, but describes no result for any of them beyond saying that Woodoo "proved to be a superior alternative material". Which certification was meant is not stated.

1. Prototype wooden touchscreenDeliveredTouch-sensitive Slim panel shown in 2023 (TechCrunch).
2. Series auto componentNot achievedNo car model with a Woodoo part announced.
3. CertificationPartialCarmaker-standard tests and fire class D in the SLIM catalogue; no certification announced.
4. Component suppliersDeliveredDuqueine to make transparent wood (Maddyness).
5. Scale-up of productionDeliveredTwo Aube sites, 14,000 m² a year (L'Essentiel de l'Éco).
6. Private investmentDelivered$31M round, April 2023.
7. Large-scale contractsPartialBouygues deal is for construction, not cars; firm batch 1,000 m³.

Woodoo had signed deals with Volkswagen and Mercedes, TechCrunch reported in 2023, without details; Maddyness named Volkswagen group brands and Bentley only as target clients. North Data's patent listing shows a Woodoo patent publication for a "Touch Detection Device with Touch Interface Made of Composite" in March 2024. Neither source, nor any carmaker, reports a production vehicle with a Woodoo component. The project ran to its planned end date, but the series car part, the centre of the CORDIS objective, has not appeared, so this article rates the award as partly delivered.

The Money Since the Award

Woodoo raised $31 million in April 2023 in a round led by Lowercarbon Capital with One Creation, Purple and business angels; about two-thirds was equity and the rest debt and grants, according to TechCrunch. Maddyness called it the company's first fundraise and reported plans to multiply capacity by five, open a second site in Troyes with capacity of 14,000 m² a year and double staff from 40 to 80. Boitouzet told TechCrunch the company had self-financed "without external cash so far"; the register nevertheless shows two capital increases in 2022, to €5,131,136 and then €6,376,406, whose subscribers are not public.

The filed accounts show the cost of that growth. SAS Woodoo's net loss rose from €462,747 in 2020 to €4,251,784 in 2024, then narrowed to €2,589,518 in 2025, according to the INPI financial ratios published on data.economie.gouv.fr; the 2025 figure also appears in the company directory. Revenue was €451,622 in 2020 and €503,154 in 2021; from 2022 the accounts carry a confidentiality declaration and revenue is not public. The dataset gives a financial autonomy ratio of 56% for 2025.

Woodoo has kept winning EU money. Since September 2024 it has been a partner in SSUCHY-Next, a Horizon Europe project on hemp fibre composites and bio-based resins running to August 2028, with an EU contribution of €427,500 towards its €712,500 share of the costs, according to CORDIS. In late 2025 Les Echos reported that Woodoo planned a third site in the Aube to raise capacity from 400 to 4,000 m³ a year and expected certification from the French building research centre CSTB in 2026; whether either has happened could not be verified.

Customers and Projects

STACK's first visible building is MixCity in Renens, Switzerland, an 11,700 m² mixed-use building for Arab Bank Real Estate, where more than 8,000 linear metres of STACK replaced aluminium facade fins and sun shades, according to Dyod Magazine; Le Temps reported in October 2025 that Woodoo had completed the facade. BNP Paribas Real Estate signed a facade partnership in early 2025, according to L'Essentiel de l'Éco and the 2025 Les Echos article. Woodoo's website also quotes Leonard (VINCI), Goyer (Eiffage) and Kengo Kuma & Associates Europe; their orders, if any, are not public.

Why It Matters for Europe

The EU Forest Strategy for 2030 calls for long-lived wood products that substitute fossil-based and carbon-intensive materials, "for example in buildings and furniture", and for investment in "the production of long-lived wood products from lower quality logs, from more hardwood species", according to the strategy text. Woodoo's use of French poplar fits that brief. The same strategy notes that construction rules such as fire regulations limit long-lived wood products and that extra harvesting can shrink the forest carbon sink until 2050, which is why the pending ATEx and CSTB approvals, not the material claims, decide how far STACK can go.

The Verdict

Woodoo, Bouygues Construction and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout. Sources disagree on the founding year: the register shows 2016 and the first CORDIS summary says "Founded in 2016", while Maddyness, Les Echos and L'Essentiel de l'Éco give 2017.