• Sound tech company Krotos closed a seven-figure pre-series A round, led by Metavallon VC, and with participation from industry angels. The exact sum is undisclosed.
• Based in the UK, the audio software company has designed sound effects and voices for blockbusters and AAA game tiles such as Game of Thrones, The Avengers, Stranger Things, The Lion King, Star Trek, and Captain Marvel.
•George Karantonis, Partner at Metavallon VC shares that the new funding will help Krotos scale its solutions. This should help the company achieve an exponential growth in sales.
CEO and founder Orfeas Boteas has started Krotos as a project during his technical sound degree at the University of Edinburgh.
One of the reasons Metavallon has joined the round is Orfeas’ plant to base a significant part of future operations in Greece, George Karantonis adds.
More about Krotos’ award-winning sound tech solutions
Krotos is the company behind award-winning plugins for sound design such as Dehumaniser and Reformer. They may not sound familiar to a non-specialist, but the tools were key in producing some of the voices and sound effects added in post-production in major Hollywood titles like Stranger Things and Game of Thrones.
Let’s take an example. Do you remember Viserion, the dragon-turned-zombie by the White Walkers in Game of Thrones? Of course you do. But what you didn’t know is that there were actually two mothers of dragons.
The other one is sound designer Paula Fairfield, who later shared the sheer amount of work that went into bringing the dragons to life on our screens. The sound you hear from the flapping of the ice dragon’s wings? The product of ten microphones placed around bones strung with bungee cords in the studio.
But the effect wouldn’t have been completed without Krotos’ Reformer. Fairfield shared that she ran the audio files through the software to further texture the sound, from rocks, glass, styrofoam, and polyurethane pieces.
By adding these effects instantaneously through software, Krotos helps creators edit and automate sound much faster than traditional techniques, saving time for the more creative parts of sound design, as well as reducing costs. Kroto’s sound tech products can add effects related to sci-fi, transitions, vehicles, or animals, as well as support creature vocalization and vocal processing.
Since their seed round, in which the ex-President of Rockstar North participated, Krotos has served thousands of content creators across 65 countries with the sound design tools for hits such as Frozen, The Jungle Book, and Star Trek.
Globally, the video and audio editing market is expected to grow up to $6 billion by 2024.
