Acoustic Company Thor Nets Nearly 100 Mn in Series A

Technology Author: Yunfeng Zhang Feb 27, 2023 11:05 PM (GMT+8)

To date, Thor Innovation (Chinese:索迩科技) has received more than 80 invention and utility patents.

mojawa

Founded in 2020, Thor Innovation aims to provide maximum value to customers and become a leading global provider of products and solutions in haptics and acoustics. It is reported that the company has recently successfully completed its Series A funding round. The investment was exclusively led by CCB International(Chinese:建银国际). Proceeds from this round will be used for fundamental technology development, innovative solution development, market expansion and team expansion.

Thor Innovation is a leading company in the Suzhou Industrial Park and one of the first high-tech companies in the Suzhou Free Trade Zone. As a pioneer in haptics, the company has developed a new vibration structure and damping system, the Truly Physical Wideband Actuator ("TPWBA"), through years of painstaking research and development. With its strong vibration sense, wide band and extremely fast response, TPWBA can simulate almost all natural events and create rich virtual tactile interaction. In addition, it can provide users with a richer and more realistic haptic interactive experience because the technology is extremely power-saving and can create a super full and more immersive effect.

Cao Hongbin, the founder of Thor, said that the haptic sense should be a very important content carrier like the visual and auditory sense. He believes that all hardware products in the future will need a holistic haptic interaction solution. Based on this judgment, Thor abandoned the simple rotor vibration motor and developed its own broadband vibration motor by changing the physical structure of the motor and the damping system to provide a more complete, detailed and immersive haptic feedback experience.

Compared to the traditional motor, Thor's broadband vibration motor has three major technical advantages at the hardware level. First, the response frequency is wider, making it possible to match the scene more richly and reproduce the corresponding feedback event more realistically. Second, the response speed is fast, the response time determines the granularity and clarity of the tactile sensation, otherwise the time is too long will have a "sticky feeling", not clear enough. Third, the ultra-low frequency response to achieve an immersive haptic experience.

After this round of financing, the biggest progress of Thor lies in the launch of direct-to-market brand Mojawa, whose current core product is bone conduction sports headphones. Bone conduction headset is a segment of the headset market, characterized by open not in the ear, in the sports scene can well protect the safety of the wearer. In the past two years, benefiting from the rise of the sports population, the bone conduction market has seen rapid growth. Since its launch in June 2022, Mojawa has quickly achieved sales of more than 10 million yuan, and now ranks second in Tmall bone conduction category.

Thor Innovation's competitors include Shokz(Chinese:韶音), VCCOR(Chinese:劲豆) and Nank(Chinese:南卡)