Audinate Pty Ltd, a company revolutionising digital media networking technology, announced today that it has raised A$4 million in its second investment round, led by Innovation Capital with follow-on investment by Starfish Ventures and NICTA. The company will use the funds to continue developing and marketing its products to the international professional A/V industry, with specific emphasis on the United States.
Audinate was founded in late 2006 as a spin out company from NICTA, Australia’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence. Starfish Ventures, NICTA and Audinate’s founders led the seed-fund investment round to enable the company to market its patented Dante™ technology, which allows time critical digital media to be transported using standard Ethernet and TCP/IP networking protocols, without compromising performance or introducing unacceptable delays.
Prior to Dante becoming available, there has been limited adoption of digital networking solutions in the professional and installed audio markets due to long latency or delay and poor synchronisation between audio and video output devices. Audinate has solved these problems with patented technology in two areas; Dante™ technology covers methods for tightly synchronising the clocks that control analogue to digital conversions on a multi-use network while keeping transmission latency to a minimum. Incorporated within Dante is Zen™ which extends the benefits of Zero configuration and self discovery networking to media networks.
The company has enjoyed substantial progress over the first two years of operation, particularly in the US market.
“Since the launch of the company almost two years ago the interest in our Dante networking technology across the audiovisual industry has exceeded our expectations. In the US market we have agreements with several major manufacturers, and interest in Europe is also growing strongly. Products incorporating Dante have been launched by Dolby and Lab.gruppen and others are in the pipeline,” said David Myers, CEO of Audinate.
Audinate’s strong progress and developing traction in the US market was a key factor in successfully securing $4 million in second round investment, which provides it with the necessary capital to continue its growth.
“The pedigree and calibre of the underlying technology developed by Audinate is clear and we are delighted to be able to support a strong entrepreneurial team as it seeks to play a major role in revolutionising the A/V equipment industry,” said Roger Price, General Partner at Innovation Capital.
“Starfish is pleased that Audinate has been able to develop the market as planned with its initial funding,” said Investment Principal Michael Panaccio. “We are confident that Audinate will become an industry standard and are delighted to further support its growth.”
“The experience and expertise provided by our investors will benefit our continued efforts to develop and market our products both in Australia and overseas,” said David Myers, CEO of Audinate. “We look forward to another successful year.”
Document(s): 
NICTA's Spin-out Audinate Secures Funding (pdf, 26KB)
Contact: Kelly Mills
Phone: +61 2 8374 5489
Email: kelly.mills@nicta.com.au