Traditionally, sleep aids have been designed to mask outside noise and promote sleep with soothing sounds. But today, a Boston-based startup came calling SOND presents a new type of headphones designed to actively intervene to encourage better sleep.
It was founded by a pair of MIT alumni, a former head of Bose’s Global Sleep, SOND came out of stealth on Wednesday with $7 million in funding. Along with the funding, the company unveiled its debut product: Dreambuds, a closed-loop in-ear system that captures 12 physiological signals from the user and then acts on them in real time to help consumers sleep better.
The initial investment of $7 million comes from the E14 Fund (an MIT-affiliated fund), Crosslink Capital, Ubiquity Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Meach Cove Capital, and Boston Scientific co-founder John Abele.
To work, the device monitors signals such as breathing, heart rate variability, cardiorespiratory coupling, sleep staging, body position, snoring and seismocardiography (SCG or mechanical vibrations of the chest wall produced by the beating heart).
This sensor data is transmitted in real time to a cloud-based sleep AI program, which then selects a sleep sound program or creates a custom one, learning over time which ones work best for the individual user.
Users can also interact directly with the AI sleep coach by speaking, requesting sleep information or specific sleep programs from SOND’s proprietary library of over 500 audio programs. (Users can also choose to stream podcasts through the case if they prefer.) The AI coach can also create audio, such as a bedtime story with a specific topic, when prompted.
Notably, the startup is co-founded and run by the CEO Yadid Ayzenbergwho previously worked at Bose as head of sleep products, where he launched Bose’s Sleepbuds 2 and managed the company’s portfolio of other sleep products. When Bose decided to strategically exit the sleep business, Ayzenberg realized it presented an opportunity to create a startup dedicated to new products in this space, which led him to found SOND in February 2022.
“I had, at the time, spent a lot of time around physiology, around sensors, around audio… I wanted to do this,” Ayzenberg told TechCrunch, sitting in an outdoor cafe with co-founder and CTO Amir Lazarovich, a former senior director of software engineering at Google, with their Dreambuds prototype device.
The co-founders met at MIT, a meeting that also had to do with sleep. Lazarovich, who was studying distributed systems, had just moved into a family dorm and didn’t have a mattress. Ayzenberg offered him one of his rooms to use. That chance meeting about fourteen years ago led to a lifelong friendship.
After MIT, Ayzenberg founded a startup called The Sync Project, which mapped music to physiological factors such as heart rate and heart rate variability. The startup was acquired by Bose after four years and eventually led to his work with the second generation of Sleepbuds.
Bose customers often wanted more from the Sleepbuds than noise cancellation, Ayzenberg says: they also wanted sensors to track their sleep and help them improve it. At the time, the technology wasn’t quite at the point where it could pack multiple sensors into a small, AirPods-like form factor while still conserving the device’s battery, however. But since Bose was getting out of sleep wearables, that had changed.
Ayzenberg cautioned, however, that the Dreambuds shouldn’t be thought of as what Bose’s Dreambuds III might have been. Instead, he admits that headphones from competitor Ozlo are more likely what would be the next step.
“We’ve done something completely different. Maybe the form factor is a headset, but that’s where it ends,” he said.
The system itself works end-to-end without the need for a phone. Instead, the Dreambuds charging case included Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, an OLED screen, physical buttons, and a speaker. The latter will help you wake up via your alarm clock even if you fall asleep before putting on the headphones.
The aim is to stop users from having to pick up their phone to control the sleep technology system.
“We have a running joke—we say that phoning an insomniac is like running an AA meeting in a liquor store,” Ayzenberg says with a laugh. “The idea here is that all you do is pop the buds and they’ll continue your sleep schedule,” she explains. “You can also switch to other sleep programs. And you can talk to the coach, just double-tap and say, ‘I’m having trouble sleeping. I want this or I want that.”
The sleep coach can help with specific sleep problems by going back to their data on what has helped you in the past, whether it was a breathing exercise, a calming piece, a soundscape, binaural rhythms, or something else. Ayzenberg confirms that the AI trainer will never speak to you unless you do so with the double-tap gesture, as he acknowledges that otherwise it could scare users or even lead them astray.
Lazarovich adds that the AI trainer will respond based on the user’s current context. “For example, if you get engaged right before bedtime, it would ask you, ‘Are you ready to relax?’ But if you commit after waking up, he’d ask you, ‘How was your night?'” she says.
In addition to hearing your results from the AI coach, Dreambuds owners can check their data and sleep charts (sleep cycle graphs) in the companion app to learn more about their sleep patterns.
The buds themselves have a unique look, as the team put the sensors on the outside — opting for an artistic sensor pattern instead of trying to hide the technology. The buds also feature wide-frequency drivers for high-fidelity audio, along with microphones and sensors for motion detection.
SOND has conducted some comfort and beta studies and now aims to bring the devices into mass production by the second quarter of 2026, following a crowdfunding campaign to raise additional funds. The company is currently accepting reservations website.
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