Bragi leaves wearables and sells his Dash business to a mystery shopper



[ad_1]

Bragi, creator of the Dash Wireless Headsets, has pulled out of the consumer market.

The company confirmed to Warable that it sold its product business to "a third party buyer" in March of this year. Bragi will continue to license its IP and AI addresses, but will no longer create new devices, confirmed company CEO Nikolaj Hviid.

Suspicions arose in January when all products on Bragi's website were out of stock. When we interviewed the company about it at that time, she told us her plans to replenish the inventory of the Dash Pro and Headphone devices in the future, but as more time went If it did not happen, the more it was obvious that something was wrong.

Read it: The best exercises in 2019

The company would not reveal the identity of the buyer, but said that customers with Bragi devices would continue to be supported by existing channels and that this would continue after the acquisition, under the new owner.

Hviid told us in a statement: "Bragi's technology suite extends beyond our own products to partners and helmet brands." The Dash Pro featured groundbreaking artificial intelligence and software that can be updated with up-to-date software. new features such as Amazon Alexa, linguistic translation and personalized hearing With the sale of our product business, Bragi has finalized its transformation into a software company, with licenses for AI and IP licenses. "

The German start-up has generated a lot of buzz for its in-ear computers over the years – and a lot of attention from the big companies that are trying to stand out in this area. According to sources talking to Wareable on condition of anonymity, Google was interested in 2017 to acquire Bragi's technology for its own Pixel Buds. The agreement was obviously not concluded and Bragi obtained new funding in August 2017, of which Google was not part.

Fitbit was another company in discussion with Bragi about a possible acquisition at about the same time, sources said. Fitbit declined to comment. Google did not respond to our request for comment at the time of publication.

Bragi leaves wearables and sells his Dash business to a mystery shopper

Bragi put its first product on the market in 2015 following a gigantic Kickstarter campaign that raised $ 3.4 million and made Bragi the spearhead of exploitable technologies. The Dash was a thrilling glimpse into the future of audio devices, but it was left behind by weak Bluetooth and half-finished features.

The company subsequently joined forces with Starkey Hearing Technology (an American manufacturer of hearing aids).) offer customers the opportunity to design the highly improved Dash Pro, which can be added to track and includes new features such as live translation. But this opened another interesting path for the company, when a bill authorizing the sale of hearing aids at the counter was adopted in 2017.

This represented a huge opportunity in assisted hearing and in 2018, Bragi announced the Ears project, a partnership with Mimi Hearing Technologies to add hearing enhancement features to its devices.

It's sad to see that none of this has been enough to save Bragi. In an AirPods world, Bragi was trying to do something different – a real "ear computer", as he often described it, and AI was an essential part of that mission. Last year, she announced the creation of a machine learning platform called NanoAI. It's at this level that she is focusing now. You can read more here.

Hot fitness tracker offers


Bragi leaves wearables and sells his Dash business to a mystery shopper

[ad_2]

Source link