EDGE Sound Research Raises Additional $2 Million for Physical AI

EDGE Sound Research announced Oct. 27 that it received an additional $2 million led by Stormbreaker Ventures, supporting its live-sports audio business and development for robotics and other physical AI applications.

EDGE Sound said the investment brings its total funding to $9 million. The company plans to expand work with sports broadcasters, leagues and venues, broaden its multimodal sensor data and develop applications for robotics, autonomous systems and intelligent environments.

Its Virtual Sound Engine uses microphones and sensor arrays to pick out sounds amid overlapping noise. It then combines audio with video, tracking, timing and location information to connect sounds with particular objects or events.

That approach treats audio as information about what is happening in an environment, rather than only as speech to transcribe. Combining sound with other sensor data can help identify the event or object associated with an audio signal.

“A broadcaster following one player through a game and a robot knowing something happened behind it are the same problem,” said Valtteri Salomaki, co-founder and CEO of EDGE Sound Research.

The company’s Virtual Sound Engine is commercially deployed in live sports. EDGE Sound named robotics and autonomous systems as development targets; the funding announcement gives no timeline for those applications.