Data-Over-Sound Pioneer Chirp Acquired by Sonos

Founded in 2011 and with a very promising trajectory of industry partnerships and growth, Chirp.io, the British data-over-sound company announced that it was acquired by Sonos, the wireless speaker company from Santa Barbara, California. With this new acquisition, that follows closely on other investments in voice- and edge-processing technologies, Sonos shows serious ambitions to expand its connected ecosystem of smart devices into the smart home and beyond.

Sensory Inc., a Silicon Valley company that pioneered speech recognition and AI in consumer electronics, announced the acquisition of Vocalize.ai, a software tools and services company that performs benchmarking, accuracy assessments and bias evaluations for speech technologies and natural language interfaces. As part of the acquisition, Sensory will maintain Vocalize.ai as an independently operated division.

Infineon Technologies announced the acquisition of Merus Audio. The Copenhagen-based start-up, founded in 2010 by Hans Hasselby-Andersen and Mikkel Hoyerby, has developed a new generation of energy-efficient integrated Class D amplifier solutions. Merus Audio amplifiers maximize audio performance and battery playback time for smart home and battery-powered speakers while minimizing heat and design space. Following the company's presentation at CES 2018, Merus generated significant interest in the audio and CE industry in general.