Technology manufacturing giant Foxconn invests in the Stanford spin-out.
Foxconn invests $5.5m in Soundhawk, a spin-out from Stanford University’s California Ear Institute. The company has created a high-tech smart listening device that helps people hear what they are listening for in a noisy environment.
The latest investment follows Soundhawk’s series A, which it closed in December 2013 at $5.7m. The company only officially unveiled the product earlier this week, and is accepting pre-orders at $279, discounted from the eventual retail price of $299.
Although it sounds like a medical device, the spin-out insists it is not. Based on research by Dr Rodney Perkins, a founder of the California Ear Institute, the device neither requires a prescription nor does it look like a hearing aid. In fact, it looks like a normal Bluetooth earpiece, and is comprised of a small kit that includes an earpiece, a charging case and a small wireless microphone on a shirt-clip. Both sound quality and volume can be adjusted via a smartphone app or a simple volume switch on the earpiece itself. Crucially, the device lets a user adjust which frequencies to amplify – so it can, for example, filter out crowd noise in a restaurant in order to better hear the people at your own table.
While a significant amount, this is not Foxconn’s largest investment to date. It invested $200m in camera maker GoPro. The company is, however, probably best known for building devices such as the Kindle, the Xbox, the PlayStation, the Wii and the iPhone.
Soundhawk is the fourteenth venture started by Dr Perkins.
