We turn the sound a machine already makes into an invoice.
A warehouse robot's motor hum becomes $0.08 per completed pick. No new hardware. No OEM involved.
MVP live · verified end to end against a running backend
Why now
Physical equipment has billed by outcome before. It took a fleet of expensive, dedicated sensors. Sound gets there with what's already on the machine.
1962
Rolls-Royce starts billing jet engines by the flight-hour, not the sale price
53%
of Rolls-Royce's revenue outcome-billed by 2011, on a fleet of dedicated onboard sensors
SoundSense does the same job with the sound a machine already makes. No dedicated hardware. No retrofit project. Software went through the same shift, faster: usage-based pricing adoption went from 45% of companies in 2021 to 61% in 2023 (OpenView UBP Benchmarks Reports).
How it works
Every machine tells you how it's running, and when it needs help.
It's been broadcasting this the whole time. Nobody built the thing that listens. Until now.
Equipment in use
→
A sound it already makes
→
{ label: "pick_complete_beep", confidence: 0.90 }
Structured event — never audio
Why sound, not something built into the machine?
Retrofit, not next-gen.Works on the millions of machines already in the field. Not just what an OEM redesigns years from now.
No OEM has to agree.Sound comes off any machine regardless of who built it. No per-manufacturer deals. No proprietary format to adopt.
Neutral by construction.One layer, same behavior across every brand. Not locked to one OEM's data format or billing rails.
Not built for one vertical
One engine, any equipment.
The same backend already bills two unrelated equipment types: a coffee machine and a fleet of warehouse picking robots. Same rules engine, unmodified. Only the sound labels changed.
Every event carries a confidence score. A low-confidence read gets held for review instead of landing on an invoice.
This kind of neutral, cross-vendor data layer is already fundable. Terminal ("Plaid for telematics") raised over $20M aggregating data from 290 trucking and fleet telematics providers. SoundSense applies the same idea to equipment that has no data stream to aggregate in the first place.
When an OEM's data format changes months later, it detects the drift and repairs the mapping on its own. We checked. Nobody else in this space ships that as a real feature.
Team
Built by two operators who've spent their careers on this exact problem.
Two decades building usage-based billing for physical equipment, before the category had a name. SoundSense is the same idea, generalized, with sound as the sensor.
Try it
Click it. Watch a sound become an invoice.
Forklift Unit #4$0.40 / load
Illustration of the mechanism, not a live connection to our backend.
Get in touch
Building in this space, or want to talk?
We're an early-stage company raising a seed round. Reach out and we'll follow up directly.