Founded by Manar Al-Harakeh, Adstrum Industries began as a company focused on bionic prosthetics and robotics. Over time, the company expanded its vision and evolved into a neural interface and robotics company, developing technologies that aim to enhance the connection between humans and machines. 

Adstrum Industries is a Beirut-based startup that builds robots, bionic devices and neural interfaces that make those machines useful for hospitals, factories and other organizations and, in fact, any other industry sector. Adstrum Industries founder Manar Al-Harakeh describes the company’s mission simply through the company’s name choice: “Adstrum means a guiding light, and it is usually a celestial object, like a star, but it's a star that guides you, like a lighthouse that guides the ship to shore,” he said. 

 What Adstrum builds is best explained by the founder, Neurex, the company’s AI enabled neural interface, reads neuromuscular signals from the forearm and turns intention into device commands. “We don’t read thoughts,” Manar cautions; the system detects motor-neuron signals tied to intention of Movement and converts them into actions: typing, pressing a button, or operating a robotic hand. For amputees, Neurex lets users’ type, play games, control smart devices or operate prosthetic hands with far less training and hardware overhead than many existing systems.https://data.worldbank.org/country/lebanonhttps://www.seedstars.com/content-hub/life/lebanon-startup-scene-built-for-global-markets/ 

 Lebanon’s economic collapse sharpens both the need for and limits on hardware innovation. Adstrum began functioning in a market where imports are a structural vulnerability. The World Bank says imports of goods and services reached 73.66% of GDP in 2023 compared to only 30.55% of exports. In parallel, a Mercy Corps - Lebanon Crisis Analytics Team report put the country’s import-to-GDP ratio at 91.4%, warning that import dependence makes the economy vulnerable to supply-chain disruptions.  

But Adstrum took this challenge and turned it into an opportunity. Between 2020 and 2023, Lebanon’s supply chains for tech and hardware inputs were hit by import disruptions, port damage, long and costly customs procedures, currency collapse, and weak logistics, which made imported sensors, parts and equipment harder to obtain and pushed startups like Adstrum toward local fabrication and in-house solutions. Adstrum was able to break through the challenges, especially at a time where funding was extremely low: in 2023 was extremely low: only 12 startups based in Lebanon raised a total of $1.1 million that year, a 95% drop from previous years, forcing entrepreneurs to prove their concepts with minimal external capital. 

 “We did not have access to any production facility, and we did not have access to suppliers… we’re talking about the time where the port was down,” Manar recalls. Logistics forced the team to design in-house alternatives: when sensors could not be imported, they built their own.  That necessity became an advantage. “Everything was bootstrapped. I was the person who paid for everything, and that meant that we needed to allocate every penny in the right place and be the most efficient in terms of spending,” he says. The pressure to spend carefully made the team ruthlessly efficient: a humble Hazmieh lab now prototypes and fabricates advanced components that, Manar argues, can rival international alternatives. “We ended up developing high-definition sensors that are not available on the market,” Manar says. 

Manar’s path was shaped by long experience in data and digital transformation. After a decade working on digital projects across the UN and governments, he turned a 2014-2015 university thesis on a bionic hand into a lab, then into a company in 2021. The team is small (roughly six to nine people) and now operates between Lebanon and France. The French incorporation was deliberate: “We want to be regulated. We want to have credibility,” Manar says, a necessary step for medical-device certification. Adstrum is pursuing ISO and MDR conformity in Europe and has recently won international recognition, including a  Hello Tomorrow Deep Tech Pioneer badge and the ESA HEC Prix Entrepreneur; wins that opened doors to European incubation and testing opportunities. 

Today the immediate use case of Neurex is medical rehabilitation: certified prosthetics partners and rehabilitation clinics will be the first pilots. Adstrum is already testing with users in Lebanon under the supervision of an experienced prosthetics specialist and plans regulated pilots in Europe in the coming months. But Manar is explicit that the platform is broader than prosthetics: “Our interface is universal. It can serve amputees, rehabilitation centres, gaming companies, smart-home and industrial control systems, even remote surgical setups.” In short: the same neural-control layer that drives a bionic hand can also power assistive tech, industrial controls or novel human-machine interfaces in entertainment and industry. 

Locally designed robotics that work under Lebanon’s constraints could shorten import chains, lower maintenance costs, and create technical jobs that anchor talent. Success would look like validated hospital or factory pilots, a maintenance partnership that keeps devices running locally, and a first small production run. 

The company’s short history is also a reminder of what some would call “innovation resilience”: technical progress that privileges durability, local adaptation and cross-border market access even while national systems struggle. 

Adstrum’s next steps are clear: finalize regulated testing, scale pilot deployments, and secure partnerships that fund certification and small-volume manufacturing.  “We are building a neural-robotic platform that can expand into many sectors,” Manar told us. If Adstrum can prove that claim in a hospital or factory setting, it will be a rare and tangible example of how Lebanese deep tech can move from crisis-era survival to practical, exportable solutions. 

Learn more about the company and its products at Adstrum’s site.