MetisMotion's EIC Accelerator Actuators Copy the Human Muscle

MetisMotion wants factories to stop gripping and clamping with compressed air and oil. Pneumatic and hydraulic actuators account for more than 10% of Europe's industrial energy consumption, according to the CORDIS summary of MetisMotion's EIC project. MetisMotion, a 2018 Siemens spin-off from Munich, replaces them with electric solid-state actuators: a piezo stack whose tiny strokes are added up by integrated microhydraulics, which the company says uses up to 75% less energy.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, naXture, at its October 2024 cut-off for blended finance, and CORDIS records a grant of €2,467,297 from May 2025 to April 2027. The goal is to automate a production that is still largely manual, the main cost barrier named in the project summary. At the half-way point in April 2026 the company said the next twelve months would be decisive for industrial proof points and scaled manufacturing.

A Siemens spin-off

MetisMotion was founded in 2018 by Patrick Fröse with the former Siemens managers Wolfgang Zöls and Georg Bachmaier. Its first round of more than €1 million came in December 2018 from High-Tech Gründerfonds, BORN2GROW and the Siemens Technology Accelerator, HTGF announced, which described actuators up to 80% smaller and lighter and up to ten times faster than conventional linear actuators. "We have achieved a reaction time that is 30 times faster than an airbag," Fröse said then.

In January 2022 the same three investors put €3 million into a third round, Startbase reported, adding that the products were already used by end customers, for example in the process industry. No customer has been named.

naXture: from the lab to series production

The EIC project targets electric actuators for tasks that need high force at high speed with low power, such as gripping and clamping, which CORDIS puts at about 20% of industrial applications. MetisMotion's midterm assessment describes the aim as "providing industrial proof points, scaling our manufacturing processes, and moving naXture from the lab into series production". It reports no result against those aims, and CORDIS shows no periodic report yet.

The company has also widened its pitch. At Humanoid Days 2026 it argued that its actuators could drive the hands, feet and spines of humanoid robots, citing a Roland Berger study that puts actuation at over 50% of a humanoid's cost, according to its summary of the talk. At automatica 2025 it showed a three-finger gripper.

1. Commercial actuator productOn salenaXture Guide family launched in 2022.
2. Industrial proof pointsNot reportedNamed as a goal for the second project year.
3. Automated series productionNot reportedNo production figures published.
4. Project completion by April 2027Too earlyNo periodic report on CORDIS yet.

Small rounds and an EIC grant

The disclosed private money adds up to a little over €4 million in two rounds, with the same three investors. The EIC grant is almost as large as the 2022 round. The award was blended finance, but no EIC Fund investment has been announced, and MetisMotion's German accounts were not obtained for this article.

Cutting the energy bill of compressed air

The EIC case for naXture rests on energy: CORDIS puts pneumatic and hydraulic actuators at more than 10% of Europe's industrial energy use and claims savings of up to 75% for the electric alternative. Neither figure has been tested in a published industrial deployment, and the proof points the project promises are what would show whether the saving holds on production lines.