Zparq: EIC Accelerator Bet on Compact Electric Boat Motors

In June 2023 Zparq told investors and the trade press it would ship electric boat motors to customers before the end of that year. Its audited accounts for 2024 record net sales of SEK 81,599 and state that the company had not started selling. In 2025 the European Innovation Council selected the Swedish start-up at its March 2025 cut-off, and CORDIS now records a grant of €2,499,332.50 for ZPARQ-Z10, a project to finish and industrialise a 10 kW electric drivetrain built around a cooling design the company says makes its motor about ten times smaller and lighter than comparable products.

The motors exist and were being tested by several boat builders by 2023. What the public record does not yet show is a product on sale at a published price or a customer willing to be named.

A motor the water runs through

Zparq grew out of work at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, where the technology was developed and tested from 2017 on underwater robots and small foiling craft, according to Plugboats and the EIT. Plugboats describes an "open-pod" design, a motor immersed in water without encapsulation, and reported that the 10 kW unit withstood pressure equivalent to about 1,000 metres depth in tests with the Swedish Maritime Robotics Centre, and that a 50 kW pod 120 mm in diameter weighed 17 kg.

The CORDIS objective credits a cooling system for making the pod motor about ten times smaller and lighter than comparable products, with lower cost of ownership, higher efficiency, less drag and longer range. CEO Jonas Genchel told Tech Funding News the motor is about ten times smaller than alternatives of the same power, without gears or seals. These are the company's comparisons; we found no independent test of them.

The company website lists the Z10 outboard at 10 kW and 17 kg plus mounting bracket, with a 96 V battery system of 5.6 kWh in two 20 kg packs. The page gives no price and no delivery date; buyers can register interest. The spec table says 5.6 kWh while the text beside it says 6 kWh.

Launch dates that moved

When Zparq closed a €2.5 million seed round in 2023, co-led by the Santander InnoEnergy Climate Fund and Almi Invest GreenTech with EIT InnoEnergy, Genchel said the money would "enable shipment to our customers already this year", per the EIT announcement of 5 June 2023. Plugboats reported the same goal: units in the water by summer and shipments by the end of 2023, with several OEMs and boat builders testing 10 kW and 50 kW motors.

The 2024 annual report, adopted on 27 May 2025, records what followed. Net sales were SEK 3,283,001 in 2023, which the board attributes to a paid proof of concept for one customer, and SEK 81,599 in 2024, because, the board writes, the company had not started selling during the year. After the year end, the report says, certification of core products had begun and development was in a final phase of testing before launch.

What the EIC project promises

ZPARQ-Z10 runs from September 2025 to August 2027 under the EIC Accelerator Open 2025 topic, with the agreement signed by the Commission on 29 September 2025, per CORDIS. The objective lists four pieces of work: optimise the design, scale it to higher power, complete a control platform with energy management and smart sailing functions, and validate the system in pilots with different end users. CORDIS shows no total project cost and, a year in, no periodic report.

1. Working 10 kW motorExistsIn pilots with boat builders in 2023 per Plugboats; specified on the company website.
2. Scale to higher powerNot shownA 50 kW pod was reported in 2023; no higher-power product is on sale.
3. Control platform with energy managementNot shownPlanned in CORDIS; no public release or test.
4. Pilots with end usersNot shownInitial OEM orders announced in April 2026; no pilot or customer named.

The money

Announcements by InnoEnergy on 22 October 2025 and Marine Industry News a day later put the EIC package at €5.5 million, "combining a grant and equity investment", without giving the split or saying who supplies the equity. Both say the existing investors, InnoEnergy, the Santander Climate Fund and Almi Invest Greentech, continue their support. CORDIS records only the grant. No EIC Fund investment in Zparq has been announced by the company or its investors, and a web search on 28 October 2026 found none.

The filed accounts show the cost of development without sales. Cash fell from SEK 24.1 million at the end of 2023 to SEK 11.8 million at the end of 2024, and the year's loss was SEK 4,706,270. Of SEK 8.9 million in 2024 operating income, SEK 8.4 million was the company's own development work booked as an intangible asset, per the annual report, which also shows SEK 5.2 million of the capitalised development as financed by grants up to that date.

For 2025, hitta.se shows a loss of SEK 7,176,000, equity of SEK 21.6 million and nine employees. We could not open the filed 2025 report to check those figures. Business directories also disagree on revenue: hitta.se lists an "omsättning" of SEK 8.9 million for 2024, which matches total operating income in the annual report, while funnelfeedr gives SEK 67,000. The net sales line in the filed report is the figure used here.

Where Zparq stands now

The company is active. In April 2026 it launched an OEM version of the Z10 drivetrain for industrial use, built around a 10 kW submersible motor weighing 4 kg, and aimed at boat builders and at maritime surveillance, subsea inspection, security and autonomous craft, Marine Industry News reported on 10 April 2026. Genchel said "established players have already placed orders for our OEM system". The same report says Zparq was selected for the EUDIS Business Accelerator, which the report describes as a programme for companies developing technologies for the European defence sector; the cohort is not stated.

The register data on hitta.se lists Genchel as CEO and a six-member board that includes Mikael Sundberg, named as a co-founder by Tech Funding News, and Boris Gyllhamn, who is named as investment manager on Almi Invest's portfolio page for Zparq. The staff count has barely moved: an average of eight employees in 2023 and nine in 2024 per the annual report, which gave ten full-time staff by the end of March 2025, and nine for 2025 per hitta.se.

The policy case

The Commission's Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy sets the milestone that zero-emission marine vessels should be ready for market by 2030. The CORDIS objective frames the project as a way to cut emissions and oil and fuel pollution from combustion engines on boats. The April 2026 move towards surveillance, security and autonomous craft adds a second market, security and defence, where Marine Industry News links the launch to rising demand for electric propulsion.

Zparq was not asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.