IN Brief:
- Beko says its R&D network spans 28 centres in 12 countries and more than 2,000 researchers.
- The company is using machine learning in materials research and generative AI in software development, alongside connected appliance platforms such as HomeWhiz.
- The wider direction is toward embedded intelligence, remote optimisation, and tighter hardware-software integration in domestic appliances.
Beko is expanding the scale and visibility of its appliance R&D operation as the home device market shifts further toward software-defined products, connected services, and AI-assisted optimisation.
The company said its research network now spans 28 R&D centres across 12 countries and employs more than 2,000 researchers, giving it a development footprint that stretches from Türkiye across Italy, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania. For a manufacturer that says it is Europe’s largest white goods company by volume and generated €10.7 billion in turnover in 2025, the message is less about lab count than about how quickly appliance electronics, software, and mechanical design are now converging.
Beko is leaning heavily into that convergence. It said machine learning is being used in materials research to predict structural performance, while generative AI is being applied to accelerate software design and development. That matters because modern appliances are no longer fixed-function boxes with static behaviour. They are increasingly built around sensor inputs, control algorithms, wireless connectivity, and updateable software layers that can tune performance over time.
At product level, that architecture is already visible in HomeWhiz-enabled appliances and AI-Sense functions that learn usage patterns, optimise refrigerator operation, and track energy consumption. Beko is also continuing to push hardware-led features such as HarvestFresh, its three-colour lighting system designed to simulate a 24-hour solar cycle inside the crisper compartment, showing how sensing, control electronics, and photonics are being used to create differentiation in categories that once competed largely on motors, insulation, and industrial design.
Nihat Bayız, chief production and technology officer at Beko, said the company’s ambition is to be one that “doesn’t just adopt technology but develops it and brings it to homes around the world.” The wider significance is that appliance engineering is starting to look more like platform engineering, with electronics, embedded software, remote diagnostics, and user-facing intelligence all feeding into the same roadmap.
That makes distributed R&D capacity strategically important. As white goods become more connected and more updateable, product cycles no longer end when a unit leaves the factory. The companies with the strongest position will be the ones that can link materials science, embedded control, connectivity, and service software into a single product architecture, then keep improving it after installation.
