AI startup led by UW computer science whiz enables ‘superhuman hearing capabilities’

A new Seattle startup is taking sound technology to a whole new dimension. Hearvana was just founded by University of Washington computer science researchers. Shyam Gollakota, co-founder of Hearvana, told GeekWire that the company is “creating AI breakthroughs that are shaping the future of sound.” “Our AI algorithms enable on-device superhuman hearing capabilities and will be part of billions of earbuds, hearing aids and smartphones,” he said. “It is an exciting time.” Hearvana is being incubated at the AI2 Incubator in Seattle. “Hearvana is my favorite kind of startup as it addresses a familiar pain point — we all struggle to… Read More

May 13, 2025 - 18:12

AI startup led by UW computer science whiz enables ‘superhuman hearing capabilities’

A new Seattle startup is taking sound technology to a whole new dimension.

Hearvana was just founded by University of Washington computer science researchers.

Shyam Gollakota, co-founder of Hearvana, told GeekWire that the company is “creating AI breakthroughs that are shaping the future of sound.”

“Our AI algorithms enable on-device superhuman hearing capabilities and will be part of billions of earbuds, hearing aids and smartphones,” he said. “It is an exciting time.”

Hearvana is being incubated at the AI2 Incubator in Seattle.

“Hearvana is my favorite kind of startup as it addresses a familiar pain point — we all struggle to hear in noisy settings like a restaurant or a party — with deep AI technology,” said Oren Etzioni, technical director and partner at AI2 Incubator.

Etzioni, the former CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, called Gollakota a “world-class computer scientist.”

Gollakota has a track record of turning research into startups.

He previously co-founded Sound Life Sciences, a UW spinout that developed an app to monitor breathing that was acquired by Google in 2022.

He’s also the co-founder of Wavely Diagnostics, which uses a smartphone app to detect ear infections.

Gollakota last year won a $100,000 award as one of six researchers honored as part of this year’s Infosys Prize.

His research focuses on wireless tech, battery-free devices, WiFi sensing and imaging, medical diagnostics via smartphones, and more.

Malek Itani, a research assistant and PhD student at the UW’s computer science school, is a co-founder of Hearvana. Itani was an intern at Meta, where he worked on smart glasses.

Gollakota and Itani published research last year on a headphone prototype that uses AI to create a “sound bubble” and can learn the distance for each sound source in a room.