Audio Software Startup DSP Concepts Closes $14.5M Funding Round
Audio tech startup DSP Concepts has raised $14.5 million in a Series B funding round led by Taiwania Capital. The Californian startup raised the investment to boost Audio Weaver, its embedded audio software platform.
Weaving a Platform
Audio Weaver is designed to be the underlying foundation that companies can use to build up audio processing software. According to DSP Concepts, more than 40 million devices now use Audio Weaver. Along with Taiwania, the new funding came from BMW i Ventures, the ARM IoT Fund, Sony Innovation Fund, MediaTek Ventures, and Porsche Ventures. The investors reflect the kind of companies that use Audio Weaver, including car companies, chipmakers, and smart device manufacturers. The platform lets developers combine disparate audio processing software into one system, often with little or no coding needed.
Audio Weaver’s software modules are then used by its partners, including Google and Amazon, who can use them to help their respective voice assistants isolate human voices from other noise. DSP Concepts has now raised a little over $25 million in venture capital after a Series A funding in 2017. The company plans to expand its presence globally with the new funding,
Audio Software Everywhere
The mix of industries represented by DSP’s investors and customers shows how voice technology is now an essential part of a growing number of industries. Cars, home appliances, and other consumer devices rely on efficient and effective audio technology. Arm will likely be using Audio Weaver for its new, vastly more powerful microcontrollers, and Sensory will probably apply the software to the customizable voice assistant platform it recently debuted. Audio Weaver’s modules are also a factor in how Alexa and Google Assistant are working to improve discerning people using their wake words from, say, a speech on television. And while most car companies aren’t using Audio Weaver as of yet, the rapid growth of automotive voice assistants, which 73% of drivers are predicted to use by 2022 according to a recent study, means the potential market is enormous even with just high-end brands like BMW, Porsche, and Tesla.
“We like to think of Audio Weaver as building blocks for audio: we provide over 400 of these audio ‘Lego’s’ that include modules to support everything from hyper-efficient IoT devices to ultra-premium automotive systems,” DSP Concepts co-founder Paul Beckmann said in a statement. “What few people realize is that audio is so much more than woofers and tweeters, but the ability to innovate with audio has been so stifled that only now, and only through Audio Weaver, will we start to see dramatic leaps forward in everything from automotive audio to edge IoT devices to even AI based medical monitoring all with Audio Weaver at the core.”
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