Skyted prepares a major fundraising for its anti-sound mask and a future product

2024-02-15 15:00:00

It’s a Toulouse Skyted gem that is making great strides, but discreetly. The young company, which has developed a mask that does not emit sound in order to make calls in an enclosed space, is preparing to significantly open up its capital. The startup plans to raise around five million euros. “ We want to complete it during the year and I am betting a lot on smart money “, entrusts Stéphane Hersen, the founder and CEO of Skyted.

To do this, the entrepreneur relies above all on business angels. Therefore, the young company intends to secure around 20% of its funding round with individual investors, through an operation to allocate redeemable share subscription warrants (BSAR).

“The best consultants for a company and the least expensive are its small supporters who will prove to be very invested in the project, who will not hesitate to be available when we need them and who will open their notebook to us of addresses without delay,” confides the manager.

According to him, ” around twenty » business angels have already expressed their interest in investing in Skyted, while Stéphane Hersen intends to raise the rest of the sought-after sum with traditional American and European investment funds.

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A new crowdfunding campaign

This is not the first time that the Toulouse startup, based in the IoT Valley, in Labège (Haute-Garonne), has called on private investors. During its previous fundraising, of one million euros in 2023, a portion also came from this type of investor. But to move forward, beyond smart moneySkyted also counts on its community and its future users.

Recently, during the month of January, the innovative company completed a crowdfunding campaign on the platform Kickstarter, which allowed him to raise more than 170,000 dollars, in the form of pre-sales.

“This campaign allowed us to record 700 additional pre-sales, in addition to those already obtained. With this initiative, the idea was to find beta testers within the global tech population. It’s a success because we have orders from Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and even the United States,” explains Stéphane Hersen.

With this support, Skyted, which wants to offer “ a global product », is now working with its industrial partners to refine the design and technology in order to make the first deliveries before the end of 2024. For the record, this mask – which takes the shape of medical masks – is made up of an absorber sound system designed by Onera for aeronautical use, thus reducing the sounds emitted by the voice by 25 to 35 decibels. Thus, Skyted’s promise is to be able to make calls discreetly in closed spaces, such as open spaces, trains, planes, airport or station halls, etc.

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A new product, without mask, to come

To also attract French users, the innovative company is preparing to launch another crowdfunding campaign on the Ulule platform. Although this new approach aims to promote the anti-noise mask, the IoT Valley tenant has other ambitions regarding its products, particularly with its internal “zero flow emitted” project.

“We are currently working on lip reading, with the objective of transcribing the desired words to the interlocutor via a robotic channel which will in reality be the voice of the user (…) The Current mask is good for statistical people, but for the army, including their commando forces, it is not suitable for example. The final objective will be to make completely silent calls with mask-free technology,” said the boss.

The future fundraising of five million euros should notably enable Skyted and its twenty employees to move forward with the development of this new product. At the same time, the startup, with its new subsidiaries in the United States and Japan, intends to begin the BtoB marketing of its anti-noise mask, its roots.