Porsche Ventures invests in US software company DSP Concepts

Porsche has purchased a stake in Silicon Valley-based DSP Concepts, Inc. A total of $14.5 million (€13.4 million) was invested in the company as part of a series B financing round.

Consequently, the overall in-vestment volume in the company, established in 2003, has increased to over $25 million (€23 million). Taiwania Capital headed up the financing round. Other companies investing in addition to Porsche Ventures include BMW iVentures, Inno-vation Growth Ventures/Sony Innovation Fund, MediaTek Ventures and the ARM IoT fund.

DSP Concepts specialises in developing software for audio signal processing and audio algorithms. The company offers an audio development platform (Audio Weaver) to streamline the audio development process. Audio Weaver is an innovative hardware-independent platform designed for in-house audio algorithm development. The software is currently used in more than 40 million devices within the au-tomotive and consumer goods industry, including at Porsche. DSP Concepts has also developed an intelligent software called TalkTo, which guarantees reliable voice control even at significant ambient noise levels.

The company has its headquarter in Santa Clara, California, and also runs subsidiaries in Boston, Stuttgart and Shanghai. DSP Concepts plans to use the collected funds to expand worldwide. The opening of a new office in Taiwan this year marks the start of this process.

“We are all familiar with the unique Porsche combustion engine sound. We transferred this essential Porsche element to electric powertrains with our first electrically driven sports car, the Taycan. DSP Concepts' technology makes it possible for our engineers to implement an individual sound concept for the Taycan and to create a unique Porsche sound signature,” said Oliver Seifert, Vice President of Electrics/Electronics Development at Porsche. “For this reason, we endeavour to further intensify our cooperation with the highly skilled DSP Concepts team.”

“The development process involving the audio environment stalled in the 1990s. However, audio experiences have never been as crucial to the success of techno-logical products as today,” said Chin Beckmann, Co-Founder and the CEO of DSP Concepts. “The Audio Weaver platform operates in real time and handles opti-misation across several chip ranges so that customers can concentrate on develop-ing functions that set their products apart from those offered by competitors.”

“We like to consider Audio Weaver as an audio development kit: our product range includes more than 400 components. These include modules to support any type of highly efficient IoT devices, right down to ultra premium automotive systems,” said Paul Beckmann explains as a Co-Founder and the CTO at DSP Concepts.