The latest music/tech startup to close its doors is Ossic, the 3D-audio technology firm behind the Ossic X headphones. The company announced the news on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform where it raised more than $2.7m in April 2016 for the first run of the device, which was aimed at music fans, gamers and virtual-reality early adopters alike.
“Ossic is shutting down and will be unable to deliver the remaining Ossic X headphones,” explained the company. “With funds from the crowdfunding campaign, along with angel investment, we were able to develop the product and ship the initial units. However, the product still requires significantly more capital to ramp to full mass production, and the company is out of money.”
Ossic blamed “VR’s slow start” as well as other hardware-startup failures for its inability to raise the $2m-plus it would need to produce its remaining backlog of pre-orders, let alone continue as a going concern.
The company raised around $2.7m of additional funds from seed investment, meaning it had $5.4m overall – which sounds a lot, but in the hardware world, possibly not so much. Ossic was one of the first startups admitted to the Abbey Road Red incubator in 2016, and won praise for its tech: perhaps another company will swoop in now to snap up its assets.
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