We’ve been working on something revolutionary for years, and we finally got to share it with the world. This past week, our parent company, Smart Materials, unveiled Huggah at the Startup Festival Malta 2025, and the response was incredible.
It was a true full-circle moment for us.
From a Pitch to a Product
Back in 2023, our co-founder and CEO, Dr. Keith M. Azzopardi, won the first-ever Pitch Black competition. Back then, it was just a bold idea, a plan to bring advanced material science out of the lab and into your bedroom.
This year, we returned to the festival. The Pitch Black competition was happening again (the second edition, as one year was skipped), but this time, we weren't pitching. We were there with the finished product: Huggah mattresses, on the floor for everyone to try.
The best part? Watching people experience it. You could see the moment it "clicked" as they felt the unique response of our Zetic® foam. We even signed up our very first "Pioneer" customers, who placed orders on the spot to be the first to sleep on this new technology.
The Icing on the Cake
As if launching Huggah wasn't exciting enough, we were stunned to be recognized with three major awards from the startup community.
- 🏆 Disruptor of the Year 2025
- 🏆 Startup of the Year 2025 (Runner-Up)
- 🏆 Founder of the Year 2025 (for our very own Dr. Keith M Azzopardi)
The "Disruptor" award feels especially right. The mattress industry has been recycling the same ideas for a century—springs, memory foam, latex. These awards validate our belief that it's time for a real shift, one based on deep technology. Dr. Keith's "Founder of the Year" award is a testament to the hard work of bridging complex academic research (from our partners at the University of Malta) with a real-world product that can help people.
What Makes This So Different?
For those who are new here, you might be wondering what all the fuss is about. At the festival, visitors could press down on our foam and see something counterintuitive happen.
Unlike traditional foam, lose support and move away from pressure, our Zetic® foam contracts towards pressure. This auxetic behavior pulls material in toward your body, creating a wider support area and distributing your weight more evenly than ever before.
This isn't just a gimmick. It solves the biggest compromise in sleep: the choice between a "soft" mattress that offers no support or a "firm" one that creates painful pressure points. Huggah gives you both: instant, cradling comfort and deep, progressive support. Comfort for both sleepers on the same mattress.
We're Just Getting Started
This technology, which for decades only existed in labs, is now real and protected. We’ve secured patents in the United States, Netherlands, Canada, China, and Japan, with more on the way.
Winning awards is an honor, but our real work starts now: getting Huggah mattresses into the homes of our Pioneer customers and, soon, everyone else.
Thank you for being part of this journey. We're not just launching a new mattress; we're changing the physics of sleep.
