Furhat Robotics

Furhat Robotics is a Swedish social robotics company. The company develops Furhat, a table-top humanoid social robot, and Misty II, a social robot used in healthcare and education. Originally a spin-off company from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Furhat's platforms have been used academic research in fields such as cognitive science, psychology, human-computer interaction, and embodied AI. Its technology has also been used in applied contexts including customer service, education, healthcare, and recruitment.

History

Furhat Robotics was founded in 2014 by Samer Al Moubayed, Preben Wik, Jonas Beskow, and Gabriel Skantze, most of whom were affiliated with the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. The company emerged from Al Moubayed's doctoral research in speech technology and artificial intelligence. He had previously studied computer science in Damascus, Syria, where he focused on emotional speech synthesis, and later completed a master’s degree in speech and language technology in Belgium before pursuing a PhD at KTH.

While working on a social robot prototype at KTH, Al Moubayed gained support from KTH Innovation, which encouraged commercialization of academic research. After sharing a video of the robot online, Al Moubayed was contacted by Disney’s R&D team and subsequently traveled to Pittsburgh in 2014 to collaborate on development and receive user feedback. Later that year, he established Furhat Robotics in Stockholm with support from KTH and collaborators from Disney.

By 2017, Furhat Robotics had 13 employees and reported having 50 customers, including companies such as Disney, Intel, Honda, Merck, KPMG, and Deutsche Telekom. The company received $2.5 million in seed funding in September 2017 from London-based venture capital firms Balderton Capital and LocalGlobe. Daniel Waterhouse from Balderton also joined Furhat’s board of directors. In 2019, the company collaborated with the Swedish recruitment firm TNG to develop Tengai, a robot intended to support more structured and consistent interview processes.

In January 2022, Furhat Robotics acquired Misty Robotics, a U.S.-based social robotics company - incorporating its product line and allowing it to use Misty's technologies in its own products. The acquisition was described by Furhat as complementing Furhat’s stationary robots with a mobile platform and broadening its hardware capabilities. The acquisition allowed Furhat's to market its products in the education and healthcare domains, particularly in the U.S.

As of 2025, the company's robotic platforms have been used by university research teams and companies in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan, and the Middle East (see a full list of Furhat's research and commercial applications here).Fast Company Middle East. "Advanced robots are coming to the UAE — and these innovative companies are building them." https://fastcompanyme.com/technology/advanced-robots-are-coming-to-the-uae-and-these-innovative-companies-are-building-them/

Products

Furhat

The Furhat robot is a humanoid bust that features a back-projected face capable of displaying a range of virtual characters. It supports conversational interaction through voice, facial expressions, eye contact, and head movement. Likened to an embodied version of voice assistants such as Siri or Alexa, Furhat combines spoken dialogue with real-time facial animation, enabling face-to-face interaction between robots and people.

Misty

Misty is a programmable social robot originally developed by the U.S.-based startup Misty Robotics, which was spun out of Sphero in 2018. The Misty II platform is used in education, research, and front-desk assistant roles. It has a mobile base, built-in sensors, and a customizable personality.

Business model

Furhat Robotics operates a platform-oriented business that enables third-party developers to create applications for its social robot interfaces.

The company generates revenue through a combination of B2B hardware sales (mostly to universities and research teams), software development kit (SDK) licenses, and enterprise partnerships. A 2021 study of social robotics in manufacturing environments noted Furhat among a small set of “industry leaders” piloting human-interaction-focused robots in real-world commercial contexts.

The company combines proprietary hardware - a robotic head with a back-projected face - with a software development kit (SDK) and conversational operating system.

Developers can access the platform using tools such as Kotlin-based scripting, Python APIs, and non-code graphical builders, allowing for both advanced customization and accessibility for non-technical users.

In addition to its proprietary tools, the platform supports integration with widely used third-party technologies, including text-to-speech (TTS) engines, automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems, voice cloning, and large language models such as OpenAI's GPT-3.5.TU Graz. 'Human Conversations with a Robotic Head.' https://www.tugraz.at/en/tu-graz/services/news-stories/tu-graz-news/singleview/article/menschliche-gespraeche-mit-einem-roboterkopf Microsoft has also featured Furhat in demonstrations of its Copilot framework, illustrating human-robot interaction through generative AI.

Tengai

An example of Furhat’s platform strategy is the development of Tengai, a recruitment-focused robot built in collaboration with the Swedish hiring firm TNG. Tengai was created using Furhat’s hardware and operating system but customized with its own personality and dialogue model for use in structured job interviews. In 2019, Tengai was spun off into a separate company, Tengai AB, which continues to license Furhat’s technology and develop recruitment-specific applications. This model — in which domain-specific software is developed by external partners or spin-offs using Furhat’s core platform — exemplifies third-party development via SDK and APIs.

This strategy reflects a broader trend in robotics and AI startups adopting platform-based business models. Analysts at strategic foresight consultancy Rohrbeck Heger cite Furhat Robotics as an example of how startups can build developer ecosystems to accelerate innovation, drawing comparisons to platform strategies seen in other industries.

Furhat conference series

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company started focusing on building a research community around its robotic platforms. One of the outcomes was the Furhat Conference on Social Robotics - a recurring online event series. The Furhat Conference focuses on topics such as conversational AI, large language models, and human-robot interaction, with presentations from researchers, developers, and other contributors in the field. The series began in 2021, and as of 2025, eight editions have been held, according to the company's website.

Awards and recognition

In 2019, Furhat Robotics was selected as a finalist in the Robotics and Hardware category at the SXSW Interactive Innovation Awards.

Furhat Robotics was among ten recipients of the Netexplo Innovation Award, presented during the Netexplo Forum at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.

Research by KTH Royal Institute of Technology linked to the Furhat platform has also received academic recognition. In 2024, a study on conversational companion robots for older adults was selected as one of the Editor’s Picks by Frontiers in Robotics and AI, chosen from 261 articles published the previous year.

References

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External links

Furhat Robotics

Misty Robotics
Swedish companies established in 2014
Artificial intelligence companies
Companies based in Stockholm