Treble Technologies, an Icelandic developer of sound simulation, acoustic digital twins and synthetic audio data, has raised $18 million in Series A-2 funding to expand its platform for audio-enabled products and physical AI systems. Paladin Capital Group led the round, with participation from existing investors KOMPAS VC, Frumtak Ventures and the European Innovation Council Fund. The financing brings Treble’s total funding to approximately €36 million.
Treble plans to use the investment to expand further into the U.S. market while supporting growing demand from consumer technology companies, enterprise customers, industrial companies and developers building physical AI and world models.
The company is focused on a part of physical AI that has received less attention than computer vision: the ability for intelligent machines to understand sound.
Robots, autonomous vehicles, wearables and head-mounted devices must operate across environments containing background noise, reverberation, changing room layouts and varying microphone positions. Devices themselves may also move while listening, adding another layer of complexity.
Treble’s platform recreates those conditions digitally.
Its physics-based acoustic modeling technology combines simulation, digital twins and synthetic data generation to model rooms, materials, vehicles, devices, speakers and ambient conditions without requiring developers to collect all of their training and testing audio in physical environments.
Development teams can use the platform to generate labeled datasets, test difficult edge cases and compare product configurations under controlled conditions.
Treble said the approach can reduce prototype testing and data collection from months to days while improving the robustness of audio AI systems.
Customers and collaborators include Amazon and Logitech.
Amazon uses virtual acoustic environments in the development of Alexa, while Logitech has used Treble to model complex acoustic conditions when developing enterprise audio products.
Founded in Reykjavík by acoustic engineers Finnur Pind and Jesper Pedersen, Treble plans to expand its role as audio becomes a more important sensory input for robots and other intelligent devices.
KEY QUOTES:
“Audio and voice interaction is becoming a fundamental interface for the next generation of intelligent products, but the physical world is acoustically complex. AI models and devices that perform well in a laboratory can struggle when they encounter reverberation, background noise, or an unfamiliar physical environment.”
Finnur Pind, Co-Founder and CEO of Treble Technologies
“In many stages of developing Alexa as an AI assistant, we rely on virtual acoustic environments to accelerate product design and model development. Treble provides an accurate and scalable way to model those environments.”
Wontak Kim, Senior Audio Research Manager at Amazon
“The Treble team has developed a simulation platform designed to help physical AI models and robots integrate visual and auditory inputs. This multimodal capability will be essential to making robots more useful, productive and safe in human environments.”
François Ruether, Vice President at Paladin Capital Group
