Altavo, a startup in AI-based voice reha­bil­i­ta­tion founded in 2021, suc­cess­fully closed its Series A financ­ing round on Feb­ru­ary 1, 2024. A Euro­pean con­sor­tium led by OCCIDENT is invest­ing € 5.0m in the devel­op­ment of Altavo’s novel Arti­fi­cial Voice.

Altavo’s Arti­fi­cial Voice is a med­ical device designed to help voice­less peo­ple, for exam­ple after laryn­gec­tomy or dur­ing mechan­i­cal ven­ti­la­tion, regain their own, nat­ural sound­ing voice. The pro­pri­etary “silent speech” tech­nol­ogy, which has been devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­sity Dres­den, is based on non-inva­sive radar sens­ing and the lat­est neural net architectures.

Investors in the cur­rent sign­f­i­cantly over­sub­scribed round are, in addi­tion to the lead investor OCCIDENT from Munich, Novalis Biotech (Ghent, Bel­gium), bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen, and oth­ers. In addi­tion, almost all seed investors from the first financ­ing round in Decem­ber 2021 are par­tic­i­pat­ing with a fol­low-on invest­ment, among them TGFS Tech­nolo­giegrün­der­fonds Sach­sen, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), Sax­o­nia Sys­tems Hold­ing and TUDAG TU Dres­den AG.

The cur­rent Series A will finance com­pany growth, prod­uct devel­op­ment, the piv­otal clin­i­cal trial, and inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion. Altavo’s tech­nol­ogy not only promises to become a break­through in the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of voice­less peo­ple, but also opens up entirely new oppor­tu­ni­ties in silent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and human-machine interfaces.

“We are happy to have gained a strong Euro­pean group of investors who share our vision: to help voice­less peo­ple regain their voice. With the financ­ing now con­cluded, our clin­i­cal sup­port­ers, and our team, we see our­selves excel­lently posi­tioned for the tech­ni­cal and clin­i­cal devel­op­ment ahead of us.”
Rudolf von Bünau, CEO and co-founder, Altavo

“With our invest­ment in Altavo we are bank­ing on an expe­ri­enced team with a com­pelling prod­uct vision. As a long-term ori­ented investor, our ambi­tion is to sup­port the team on their path into the mar­ket and to enable the real­iza­tion of the company’s ambi­tious goals.”
Mirco Müller, Junior Invest­ment Man­ager, OCCIDENT

“We were impressed with Altavo’s highly expe­ri­enced and ded­i­cated team and inno­v­a­tive, poten­tially dis­rup­tive tech­nol­ogy. We look for­ward to sup­port­ing the com­pany to bring this unique solu­tion to voice-impaired individuals”.
Jaroslav Belot­serkovsky, Invest­ment Man­ager, Novalis Biotech

“To us, Altavo, with its loca­tions in Dres­den and Jena, is a prime exam­ple of the inno­va­tion power of our cen­tral Ger­man region and of the suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion between star­tups and uni­ver­si­ties. We are glad to be invest­ing in a promis­ing medtech com­pany that ben­e­fits from the exist­ing ecosys­tems in both loca­tions and com­ple­ments them.”
Michael Thiele, Invest­ment Man­ager, bm|t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh
and Sören Schus­ter, CEO, TGFS Tech­nolo­giegrün­der­fonds Sachsen

 

About Altavo

Altavo GmbH is a Dres­den based med­ical device startup founded in Feb­ru­ary 2021. Based on non-inva­sive radar sens­ing and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, Altavo is devel­op­ing pros­thet­ics to improve the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of aphonic and severely voice impaired patients. At its Dres­den and Jena loca­tions, Altavo cur­rently employs a team of 15 with many years of expe­ri­ence in the fields of AI / data sci­ence, speech tech­nol­ogy, radio fre­quency engi­neer­ing, med­ical devices, and speech ther­apy. Altavo is part­ner­ing with the Chair of Speech Tech­nol­ogy and Cog­ni­tive Sys­tems and the Chair of Radio Fre­quency Engi­neer­ing at Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­sity Dres­den. The col­lab­o­ra­tion is sup­ported by grants from the Ger­man Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Research (BMBF) in the project “Promise-AI” and Säch­sis­che Auf­baubank (SAB) in the project “SEMECO-B3: MUSIK”.
Media Con­tact: Rudolf von Bünau, rudolf.vonbuenau@altavo.eu

About OCCIDENT

OCCIDENT is an inter­na­tional ven­ture cap­i­tal investor with offices in Munich and Zug, is own­er­man­aged and invests its own assets. Its mis­sion is to make a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety through sus­tain­able and mean­ing­ful invest­ments. OCCIDENT invests in inno­v­a­tive deep tech start-ups with excel­lent tech­nolo­gies, broad appli­ca­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties and the poten­tial for fur­ther value-gen­er­at­ing devel­op­ment in the fields of life sci­ences, indus­trial tech and dig­i­tal. OCCIDENT acts as a long-term enabler for highly inno­v­a­tive star­tups and vision­ary founders.

About Novalis Biotech

Novalis Biotech (Ghent, Bel­gium) is an early-stage ven­ture cap­i­tal investor in tech­nolo­gies that rev­o­lu­tion­ize health­care. The company’s core com­pe­tence lies in dig­i­tal­iza­tion in the life sci­ences with a focus on bioin­for­mat­ics, genomics and diag­nos­tics. Novalis strongly believes in apply­ing inno­v­a­tive enabling tech­nol­ogy to advance the pre­ven­tion, diag­no­sis, or treat­ment of a disease.

About bm|t beteiligungsmanagement thüringen

bm|t, based in Erfurt, is a sub­sidiary of Thüringer Auf­baubank and the lead­ing address for invest­ments in Thuringia. bm | t cur­rently man­ages twelve funds with a total vol­ume of around EUR 445 mil­lion, which are to be invested in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies in almost all sec­tors and in all phases of cor­po­rate devel­op­ment — both in the start-up and growth phases or in com­pany suc­ces­sion situations.
Media Con­tact: Michael Thiele, michael.thiele@bm‑t.com

About TGFS Technologiegründerfonds Sachsen

TGFS is an equity investor for knowl­edge-based, tech­nol­ogy-ori­ented start-ups in the fed­eral state of Sax­ony. It is the lead­ing start-up investor in Sax­ony and pro­vides teams in the seed and start-up phases with ven­ture cap­i­tal and man­age­ment sup­port. More­over, an invest­ment by TGFS opens up access to fur­ther inter­na­tional investors from the fund’s net­work. The fund was first launched in 2008 by Saxony’s Gov­ern­ment (includ­ing ERDF fund­ing) and Saxon finan­cial insti­tu­tions and has since sup­ported over 100 start-ups in what is now the third fund generation.
Media Con­tact: Sören Schus­ter, ph. +49 172 2001097, soeren.schuster@cfh.de

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed investor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finances tech start-ups with growth poten­tial and has sup­ported more than 700 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of its fourth fund, HTGF now has about 1.4 bil­lion euros under man­age­ment. Its team of expe­ri­enced invest­ment man­agers and start-up experts sup­port young com­pa­nies with exper­tise, entre­pre­neur­ial spirit and pas­sion. HTGF’s focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of dig­i­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life sci­ences, chem­istry and related busi­ness areas. To date, exter­nal investors have injected about 5 bil­lion euros of cap­i­tal into the HTGF port­fo­lio via more than 2,000 fol­low-on financ­ing rounds. In addi­tion, HTGF has already suc­cess­fully sold shares in more than 170 com­pa­nies. Fund investors in this pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship include the Ger­man Fed­eral Min­istry for Eco­nomic Affairs and Cli­mate Action, KfW Cap­i­tal and 45 com­pa­nies from a wide range of industries.
Media Con­tact: Tobias Jacob, Senior Mar­ket­ing & Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Manager
ph. +49 228 82300 121, t.jacob@htgf.de