Bluetooth technology startup T2 Software has been sold.
The Louisville company, founded in 2018, has been acquired by Sonos Inc. (Nasdaq: SONO), a wireless home audio company based in Santa Barbara, California, Protocol confirmed. I reached out to both Sonos and T2 Software, who declined to comment any further on the transaction.
T2 Software was led by CEO Tim Reilly and equity partners Tim Thomas, director of engineering, and Michael Rougeux, director of software engineering. All three worked together at Reilly's previous company, Stonestreet One, which was acquired by Qualcomm in 2014.
A year ago, Reilly told me T2 Software got its start as a general engineering services company, but was drawn back into the Bluetooth space after Bose, a national audio equipment retailer, asked T2 to work on its behalf to define specifications for the next generation of Bluetooth audio.
The company went on to develop its own software, specifically the Bluetooth Low Complexity Communications Codec (LC3) that is designed to achieve high-quality audio at much lower data rates than current Bluetooth audio solutions, which results in a lower power consumption.
Outside of its founding team, T2 Software had one named investor in late 2020, Neil Ramsey, who invested $1 million into the company to allow it to further develop its technology. Ramsey was also the lead investor in Stonestreet One, and therefore saw the biggest return when that company was acquired.
Protocol and several other tech publications have speculated that the acquisition means Sonos is getting closer to unveiling headphones, a new product segment for the company.
As the Silicon Valley Business Journal reports, Sonos pioneered home speakers that can stream music or podcasts from smartphones and that can be wirelessly networked together to play songs in different rooms. It started out working with Google in 2013, but that relationship soured when the Mountain View, California company started introducing its own speakers and streaming devices.
Read more about T2 Software in my February 2021 profile here.
