The power of the promise
By Knut Sandven, CEO and founder, Sonair
Oslo, Norway, December 16, 2025
Here’s one thing I know: nothing beats the feeling of building a plan, assembling a crew, and delivering on it.
There are big plans and small plans. Big plans are made up of many smaller ones.
Our big plan with Sonair is to enable a future where humans and robots co-exist safely and seamlessly. In public spaces, at home, at work. Anywhere.
For AI to make the leap into the physical world at scale, multiple bottlenecks remain - with safety as a primary one.
We say: Check. Sonair is here to make robot safety simple.
For 2025, we built a bold plan to deftly move our ADAR 3D ultrasonic sensor from prototype to commercial product. We wanted to win our first design-ins, build a solid customer pipeline, and get seriously busy creating our very own category – safe 3D sensing for robots.
Here's our 2025 scorecard:
✅ Launched ADAR as a commercial product this summer (on schedule).
✅ Built a pool of 40+ paying, global robotics and automation firms testing ADAR (the goal was 30).
✅ Earned our first design-ins (stay tuned for launches next year).
✅ Featured in more than 80 media articles globally.
✅ Secured new funding from leading international investors.
Another ambition was to learn more about our customers and the industry. With a product that could fit into almost any use case, we’ve gone full throttle populating our CRM with customer input and working to translate problems-to-be-solved into solutions.
A big pain point across all the use-cases is that safety is seen as something that comes at the expense of performance. You want your robot to do all these useful things, but then safety requirements hold you back.
This is our opportunity. To make safety simple.
Easy to say, hard to do. And there is cost attached to sticking to our plans:
- It’s the cost of a team - real people, mothers and fathers - throwing themselves at deadlines.
- It’s the cost of being willing to delay a technology or feature you really wanted to see implemented soon.
- It’s the cost of postponing internal processes that probably should get attention.
The team is stretched right now. But the option is to never get anything major done.
Those are the magic words: Getting major things done. That’s what we’ve promised to ourselves, our investors, and the world.
That Sonair is here to get big things done.
When we deliver on the small plans, we show that we are on track for the big one.
Trust is built that way.
And trust is what gives a promise its power.
