MONTREAL, QC / ACCESSWIRE / September 8, 2021 / AAVAA, Inc., (AAVAA or the "Company") today announced it has begun commercialization discussions with OEM's in the hearing assistance, personal audio, and hearing protection industries to integrate its world-leading attention-directed hearing enhancement platform into their devices. The Company also announced its graduation from Montreal-based deep tech incubator, TandemLaunch, and the launch of a US $6m to $8m funding with TandemLaunch pre-committed for 25% of the round.
AAVAA is a spinout of TandemLaunch, a startup foundry formed in 2011 by CEO Helge Seetzen and his partners to revolutionize the process of tech-transfer whereby universities' deep-tech research is transformed into successful commercial applications. AAVAA grew from such roots, initially formed around patents and technology licensed from world-leading universities in the US and Germany. They recently recruited successful serial tech entrepreneur Barclay Knapp as CEO to begin scaling the company for commercial operations, joining AAVAA's co-founders Naeem Komeilipoor, CTO, and Lex Schindler, COO.
AAVAA fuses cutting-edge Brain-Computer Interface, Artificial Intelligence, and Acoustic technologies to allow users to focus their audio enhancement devices on the sounds they want to hear, simply by paying attention to them, while AAVAA's audio processing software simultaneously enhances those attended sounds and suppresses annoying background noise.
The platform can be implemented in different form factors, such as in-ear earbuds, headphones, AR/VR sets, and more, as seen on the concept designs in the following video.
AAVAA's platform thus solves one of the most common complaints of hearing aid, personal audio, and hearing protection users, namely, their inability to distinguish important sounds in noisy environments. Hearing aids, for example, generally boost the volume of all surrounding sounds, including noise; while hearing protection devices generally block all surrounding sounds, including important alerts and conversations.
AAVAA's attention detection technology can also recognize and use intentional eye-blinks as commands to control remote devices, thus enabling hands-free and voice-free human-device interactions.
Taken together, the combination of AAVAA's neural decoding, attention detection, and eye blink commands have the potential to revolutionize not only audio devices but also Extended Reality, Internet of Things, and a host of other human-device applications.
Commenting on AAVAA joining over 30 consecutive successful startups to emerge from his program, TandemLaunch Founder and CEO Helge Seetzen said: "AAVAA is a true TandemLaunch success story. The team has done wonders building upon their initial patent and now has the opportunity to permanently reshape the world of audio enhancement and neural-driven attention detection across multiple industries."
Commenting on TandemLaunch's incubator program, AAVAA's Co-Founders Naeem Komeilipoor and Lex Schindler and CEO Barclay Knapp said: "Throughout our journey at TandemLaunch we received invaluable support - from IP portfolio building, to tech and market validation, to productization and industrial partnership, and now to fundraising."
About AAVAA
AAVAA was formed in 2019 specifically to pursue advanced audio enhancement opportunities. Founders Naeem Komeilipoor, Chief Technical Officer, and Lex Schindler, Chief Operating Officer, received CAD 800K in seed funding and start-up assistance from Montreal-based tech incubator TandemLaunch. The founders subsequently recruited Barclay Knapp, a successful serial entrepreneur and company scaling expert as CEO.
AAVAA's world-first technology platform starts with unobtrusive sensors that can be included on the inside and around-the-ear portion of existing hearing devices, together with software that integrates easily with current hearing device components.
AAVAA's sensors detect the user's attention space via decoding and combining brain signals, eye movement, and head direction. Simultaneously, AAVAA recognizes the auditory environment and separates and enhances the desired sounds and suppresses distracting noises.
AAVAA's technology has been encompassed in filings with US and International patent agencies.
About TandemLaunch
TandemLaunch creates, incubates and accelerates early-stage technology start-ups based on inventions from the world's top universities in the areas of artificial intelligence, computer vision, IoT, audio and advanced sensors. The Company scouts thousands of technologies every year from a network that spans over 600 universities worldwide. Having successfully executed over 50 technology transfer agreements, TandemLaunch is a spinout foundry with an international scope, producing high-impact, IP-focused companies with an unprecedented rate of success.
For further information contact: info@aavaa.com Website: www.AAVAA.com
SOURCE: AAVAA, Inc.
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