BANGKOK, THAILAND – November 20, 2025 – SCB 10X, the disruptive technology investment arm of SCBX Group, announced its participation as a co-lead investor alongside Point72 Ventures in the $6 million oversubscribed pre-seed funding round of Hearvana, a company pioneering auditory intelligence that enables both humans and machines to achieve superhuman listening abilities. The round also saw participation from the AI2 Incubator, SBI US Gateway Fund, Forston VC, Ascend, J4 Ventures, Pack Ventures, Moai Capital, and Amazon Alexa Fund.
Hearvana is redefining how sound is perceived by AI and humans. Its platform represents a major leap in real-time and on-device audio augmentation and comprehension, enabling AI assistants, hearing devices, smart glasses, and voice-driven products to listen, interpret, and manipulate audio with unprecedented quality and latency. Hearvana empowers devices to perceive the world beyond human capability, grasping intent and context in complex, noisy environments, and helping people communicate more effectively with each other and with machines.
“We believe Hearvana is approaching an exciting area in AI, focusing on how devices listen,” said Jeffrey Lu, Investor at Point72 Ventures. “Our view is that their work has the potential to unlock a new layer of intelligence for voice interfaces, smart devices, and hearing applications, and we’re thrilled to support the team as they bring this capability to market.”
The company was founded by Shyam Gollakota, professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, alongside embedded systems and audio AI experts Malek Itani and Tuochao Chen.
“Led by a highly technical, domain-expert team, Hearvana sits at the intersection of AI, audio, and embedded hardware, creating a next-generation auditory layer that advances edge AI and human–machine interfaces, powering superhuman hearing for personalized AI agents,” said
Pailin Vichakul, Chief Investment Officer at SCB 10X.
Over the years, the team has pioneered multiple breakthrough technologies, including Target Speech Hearing, Sound Bubble, Full-Duplex Dialogue Agents, and Proactive Conversational Assistants, advancing the frontiers of how humans and machines perceive and interact through sound. Together, the founding team brings decades of expertise in auditory computing, embedded intelligence, and deep learning to build products that bridge cutting-edge science with scalable real-world applications.
“We were interested in Hearvana’s technology making interactions between people and AI services more natural,” said Paul Bernard, director of the Alexa Fund. “The team’s cost-efficient approach to making advanced hearing capabilities more accessible by bringing its audio technologies to everyday devices aligns with our focus on customer obsession.”
“The founders’ technical depth and vision stood out from day one,” said Oren Etzioni, AI2 Incubator. “Hearvana is translating groundbreaking audio AI research into scalable products that make AI more human-aware and responsive.”
With the new funding, Hearvana will expand its engineering and go-to-market teams and launch commercial pilots with partners across consumer electronics and AI ecosystems.
“At Hearvana, we’re scaling technology that creates superhuman listening,” said Shyam Gollakota. “Spanning AI assistants that run on commodity devices like laptops and smartphones to more constrained wearables like earbuds and smart glasses, we see a future where devices don’t just hear, they understand and help humans communicate better with each other and with AI. This funding allows us to move faster from innovation to deployment.”
About Hearvana
Hearvana is creating superhuman auditory intelligence that enhances how both humans and machines listen. Its technology powers more natural, perceptive, and emotionally aware audio experiences for AI assistants, devices, and communication systems worldwide. Founded by experts in auditory computing and AI, Hearvana’s mission is to make sound the smartest interface between humans and technology.
For more information, visit hearvana.ai
About SCB 10X
SCB 10X is a disruptive technology investment arm of SCBX Group and was established in January 2020 with a “Moonshot Mission” to achieve exponential growth through technology innovation and investment in disruptive technologies such as Digital Asset, Blockchain, Web3, as well as DeepTech such as AI/Machine Learning.
For more information, please visit https://scb10x.com/
