When Mathieu Merian started looking into exoskeletons in 2020, he expected to find something he could help a friend with multiple sclerosis access. Instead he found devices costing around €250,000. The technology to help people walk again existed. Access to it did not.
Somanity designs and deploys 3D-printed exoskeletons across healthcare, industry and sport. The approach treats cost as an engineering problem to be solved at the design stage, through additive manufacturing and personalisation to each user rather than production in three standard sizes.
Mathieu is Somanity’s CEO and Founder. He started his first company, a 3D printing business, at seventeen. Somanity is currently part of the OVHcloud Healthcare Accelerator cohort, powered by Empact Ventures. We spoke about why affordability has to be designed in from the start, and why his friend is still the reason the company exists.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your role?
My name is Mathieu Merian, and I am the CEO and Founder of Somanity, a deeptech company based in Sophia Antipolis, on the French Riviera.
Somanity designs and deploys exoskeletons across three worlds that rarely talk to each other: healthcare, industry and sport. The common thread is simple. Wherever the human body reaches its limit, whether that limit comes from illness, from repetitive strain at work, or from the demands of performance, we want technology to give people their capability back rather than replace them.
My role sits at the intersection of engineering, clinical reality and business. On any given week that means working with our technical team on product development, standing in a logistics warehouse watching operators handle our devices at their actual workstations, and building the partnerships and funding that let a hardware company scale. I spend a lot of time on site, because an exoskeleton that performs well in a lab and poorly on a real shift is not a product, it is a prototype.
Somanity is currently part of the OVHcloud Healthcare Accelerator cohort, powered by Empact Ventures.
How did your company come about and what was the motivation behind it?
Somanity did not begin with a technology. It began with a friend.
In 2020, a close friend living with multiple sclerosis told me what he actually wanted: to walk again. I started looking into what existed, expecting to find a solution and simply help him access it. What I found instead was a commercial exoskeleton market where devices cost around 250,000 euros. Technically impressive, and completely out of reach for the people who needed them most. The technology existed. Access to it did not.
I was already building things at that point. I had founded My3D at seventeen, a 3D printing and prototyping company in Sophia Antipolis. Through that work I had produced a prosthetic arm and, during COVID, thousands of pieces of protective equipment as part of a makers collective. So I knew what additive manufacturing could do to a cost structure, and I knew what happened when you designed something around one specific body rather than a production average.
That gave me the challenge I set myself: build the first 3D-printed exoskeleton at a fraction of the price. Somanity was founded in 2021 on exactly that premise.
The motivation has not changed since. Mobility should not be a luxury product. We build 3D-printed exoskeletons that are personalised to each user rather than mass-produced in three sizes, which is what makes the economics work and, just as importantly, what makes the device something people actually wear.
Two divisions grew out of that. On the medical side, we develop AI-driven exoskeletons that learn from the user’s own data and adapt to their specific condition. On the industrial side, we deploy exoskeletons that prevent musculoskeletal disorders, the leading cause of occupational illness, with big companies. Different users, same principle: the machine supports the movement, it never takes it over.
My friend is still the reason the company exists.
Can you describe your company’s mission and values?
Our mission is simple to state and difficult to execute: make physical capability accessible again, at a price that does not exclude the people who need it.
The name says it. Soma, the body, and humanity. We build machines that serve the body rather than substitute for it. Every design decision at Somanity comes back to one question: does this give the person more agency, or less?
Four values run through the company.
- Accessibility is a design constraint, not a marketing line. When we started, exoskeletons cost around 250,000 euros. We treat cost as an engineering problem to be solved at the design stage, through 3D printing and personalisation, not as a price to be justified afterwards. A device nobody can afford has zero impact, however elegant the mechanics.
- The person comes before the product. We build around one body at a time rather than three standard sizes. In healthcare that means an exoskeleton adapted to a specific condition. In industry it means going to the site, watching operators at their actual workstations, and adjusting to the real gesture rather than the one in the specification. Some of our best product decisions came from a warehouse floor, not a lab.
- Augment, never replace. Our devices assist movement, they do not perform it. That distinction matters technically, and it matters even more to the user. An operator using our exoskeleton is still doing their job. A patient using our device is walking, not being carried.
- Openness. We plan to release our exoskeleton shells as open source designs so users can print and adapt them to their own needs. If our goal is genuinely to widen access, keeping every part of the solution locked inside the company contradicts it.
We are a deeptech company, but the technology is the means. Autonomy is the outcome.
What are some of the most pressing social issues that your company is working to address through its technology?
Three issues, one common failure: we treat the loss of physical capability as inevitable when it often is not.
- Loss of autonomy. More than 120,000 people live with multiple sclerosis in France, with 4,000 to 6,000 new cases a year. It is the leading cause of severe non-traumatic disability in young adults. Losing mobility is not a comfort problem, it is a withdrawal from work, from social life, from independence.
- Unequal access. Exoskeletons cost around 250,000 euros when we started. The technology to help people already existed, it was simply priced for institutions rather than individuals. An innovation that reaches only the wealthiest hospitals has not solved the problem, it has moved it.
- Musculoskeletal disorders at work. They account for more than 80% of recognised occupational diseases in France, over 11 million working days lost a year. Behind those numbers are warehouse, care and construction workers whose bodies wear out one repeated gesture at a time.
How does your company measure the impact of its work in creating positive change?
We measure on three levels, and we are deliberately careful not to confuse activity with impact.
At the individual level. For medical users, the question is functional and specific: can the person stand, walk, or hold a posture they could not hold before, and for how long. We track adherence closely, because a device that sits in a cupboard has zero impact whatever the lab results say. Comfort and wear time tell us more about real value than peak performance figures.
At the workplace level. With industrial clients we run on-site trials at real workstations, not demonstrations. Several models are left on site over a period of weeks, tested by operators across different roles, with feedback collected from the people actually doing the job. We measure perceived exertion and whether the device is still being worn voluntarily once the novelty has worn off. The long-term metric that matters to employers is reduction in musculoskeletal injury and absenteeism, but that is measured in years, not weeks.
At the access level. Cost per device, and how far below the market standard we stay. If our price drifts back towards the industry norm, we have failed our own mission regardless of how good the product is.
And then there are the stories. A friend with multiple sclerosis standing up. Those do not fit in a spreadsheet, and they are still the reason the spreadsheet exists.
In your opinion, what impact will technology have in creating a better future?
I am optimistic about what technology can do, and sceptical about assuming it will do it on its own.
Technology does not create progress. Distribution does. The last two decades produced extraordinary medical devices that most people who need them will never touch, because nobody treated affordability as part of the engineering brief. A breakthrough that reaches a hundred people is a paper. A modest solution that reaches a hundred thousand changes a society. So the question I care about is not what the technology can do at its peak, it is who ends up holding it.
Where I am genuinely hopeful is the convergence happening right now between AI, additive manufacturing and wearable robotics. AI lets a device learn one specific body rather than an average one. 3D printing lets us produce that adapted device without a factory retooling. Together they break the old trade-off between personalisation and cost, which is exactly the trade-off that kept assistive technology out of reach. That is not a distant promise, it is what we build with today.
The other shift I want to see is philosophical. Too much of the current conversation is about replacing human capability. I think the more valuable direction, and the harder one, is augmenting it. Keeping an ageing worker in their job without destroying their spine. Keeping a person with a neurological condition walking. Technology at its best does not make humans redundant, it makes them capable for longer.
That is the future worth building.
What advice do you have for other companies looking to use technology for good and create a positive impact in the world?
Four things I would tell my earlier self.
Start from a person, not a market. Somanity exists because a friend with multiple sclerosis told me he wanted to walk again. That is a much better brief than a market study, because when the technical decisions get hard, and they will, you know exactly who you are answering to. Impact companies that start from a trend tend to drift. Ones that start from a face do not.
Treat cost as an engineering constraint from day one. This is the advice most impact founders skip. If your solution only works at a price your intended users cannot pay, you have not built a solution, you have built a demonstration. Affordability has to be designed in at the beginning, not discounted at the end.
Go where the problem actually happens. Some of our best product decisions came from standing on a warehouse floor watching operators work, not from a lab or a meeting room. The gap between the specified gesture and the real one is where products fail. Nobody will describe that gap to you in an email. You have to go and see it.
Measure adoption, not admiration. A device people praise but do not wear is a failure. Track whether your solution is still being used voluntarily once the novelty is gone. That number is uncomfortable and it is the only honest one.
And be patient with hardware. Software iterates in a day, a physical product touching a human body iterates in months, with regulation on top. Impact in the physical world is slow. It is also very hard to undo once it works.
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Somanity plans to release its exoskeleton shells as open source designs so users can print and adapt them to their own needs.
You can find out more at somanity.com.
