I will describe a class of structures, known as exceptional algebroids, which arose as a natural generalisation of the "exceptional tangent bundle" of exceptional geometry. I will show how the algebroids relate to type II string and M-theory restricted to lower dimensions and how to use them to study consistent truncations and the Poisson—Lie U-duality. I will finish with some examples. This is a joint work with M. Bugden, O. Hulik, and D. Waldram.