Devialet, known for its Phantom speaker which supposedly sounds better than speakers 20 times bigger, just announced that it has closed a $20 million Series B round. LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, Xaviel Niel, Jacques-Antoine Granjon, and Marc Simoncini are behind today’s funding round.
This funding follows a Series A in 2012 where the company raised $19.1 million to fund the development of the original Phantom Speaker, which Devialet said had a $30M R&D budget.
The Phantom was one of the stars of this year’s CES in Las Vegas. This compact speaker is much louder than all the other speakers that we saw at the show. From the other end of a crowded room you could still hear the Phantom.
But the Phantom is also a different beast from your usual cheap Bluetooth speaker. Designed by a French team that has years of experience in the speaker and amplification industry, the company didn’t try to create yet another portable speaker. Instead, it went for the upper end of the market.
Priced at $2,000, this speaker isn’t for everyone. With this budget, you could get a speaker for every single room of a big house. But if you are serious about music, the company wants you to think that the Phantom is the speaker that you need. Devialet promises no distortion or saturation — we didn’t get a chance to try this speaker in a quiet room, so you will have to take all of this with a grain of salt.
The company doesn’t want to be just a CES media darling anymore, and is ready to expand to the U.S. With at least $20 million in the bank, Devialet should be able to get the word out among American audiophiles.
And of course, Devialet is also thinking about its next product already. The company also announced today that it will introduce a new product, the Phantom Implosive Sound Center. Shipping this summer, the new hyperbolically named device could be powerful enough to replace all other audio components traditionally needed for a proper audio setup.
