Amptify, a St. Louis-based company that has developed software to provide rehabilitation for those with hearing loss, wants to be acquired.
That’s in part because Nancy Tye-Murray — who co-founded the company in 2015 and is currently its chief scientific officer and majority shareholder — is looking to cash in some of her stock options, step back from its day-to-day operations and focus on new ventures, said Chief Executive Chris Cardinal.
It’s also because the company’s software has been developed, validated and begun gaining market traction, making now the right time to quickly scale through a strategic acquisition, he said.
Spun out of Washington University School of Medicine’s Audiovisual Speech Perception Laboratory, Amptify’s software is designed to provide rehabilitation for those with hearing loss, and its digital platform offers coaching, curricula and video games for auditory training.
Amptify is looking to be acquired by a company with an existing distribution channel, something Cardinal said will make expanding the company’s reach quicker and easier. Multiple companies fitting that bill have already expressed interest in purchasing Amptify, he added.
Three of Ampitfy’s largest partners control about three-quarters of hearing aid distribution worldwide, Cardinal said. “Naturally, because we’re developing this product that really can work alongside those devices, we’ve had these ongoing discussions about a potential acquisition," he said.
The company has also had discussions about an acquisition with some “very large” health insurance companies, the result of a new movement in the benefits space in which companies are offering “whole head benefits,” or a bundle of dental, vision and hearing benefits, Cardinal said.
He declined to name any of the companies with which he’s had discussions about an acquisition but said a deal is likely.
“I have a lot of meetings scheduled, and I’m putting together a lot of very specific pitches and proposals to the companies who are coming to me so that I can really give us the best shot to get a return on the investment that we have all made into this company,” Cardinal said.
Amptify to this point has not taken on any outside investments, having so far been funded through a combination of grants, investments from the company’s founders and employees, and the reinvestment of its profits, Cardinal said.
Investments from founders and employees and grants — including a $100,000 nondilutive grant from Arch Grants and an unspecified amount from Missouri Technology Corp., both of which the company received last year — total about $1 million, Cardinal said. He declined to share revenue and profit figures but said that the company has “been successful.”
Ampitify, which has six total employees, three of whom are local, will not entertain acquisition offers with transaction values under $5 million, Cardinal said. However, certain factors, such as what the acquiring company plans to do with the Ampifity’s employees and technology, could cause that figure to fluctuate slightly, he said.
Cardinal joined Amptify in 2019 with an entrepreneurial background and was promoted to CEO in December 2022. He formerly was founder and CEO of Welltodo, a St. Louis-based health startup that created a mobile app to manage migraine headaches. He sold Welltodo in 2018 to Charlotte, North Carolina-based SensorRX Inc.
