Abstract: Disclosed herein are expanded thermoplastic polyurethane beads polymerized from an isocyanate, an isocyanate-reactive compound having a molecular weight between 500 and 10 000 g/mol and a chain extender, wherein customary adjuvants may be additionally present, and the thermoplastic polyurethane has a hard phase fraction ranging from 0.1 to 0.95 and the hard phase fraction is defined by: Hard ? ? phase ? ? fraction = ? x = 1 k ? ( ( m KVx M KV x ) · M Iso + m KVx ) m ges where MKVx represents a molar mass of chain extender x in g/mol, mKVx represents a mass of chain extender x in g, MIxo represents a molar mass of isocyanate in g/mol, mges represents a total mass of all starting materials without adjuvants, and k represents a number of chain extenders. Also disclosed herein are processes for producing expanded thermoplastic polyurethanes and processes for producing molded parts therefrom.