As consumer devices become smaller, smarter and more wearable, one of the most stubborn design challenges remains sound. Traditional speakers rely on mechanical components that take up space, consume power, and limit how small audio hardware can become.
Danish company SonicEdge is developing a different approach. The deep-tech company is building MEMS-based micro-speakers, using semiconductor technology to generate sound from a chip rather than a conventional moving driver.
By replacing mechanical structures with a solid-state design, SonicEdge promises smaller speakers with broader bandwidth, higher efficiency, and no mechanical vibration — potentially enabling more compact hearing aids, custom-fit audio devices, and next-generation wearables.
I spoke to CEO Dr Moti Margalit, to learn how the technology works and where it could reshape the future of audio.
Starting from physics to reinvent small-speaker audio
The spark for SonicEdge came from a conversation with his co-founder, Ari Mizrachi, who uses a hearing aid.
“He told me that while it was ‘better than nothing,’ he still couldn’t hear music properly. That complaint is very common."
That question sent Margalit back to first principles: how do you generate high-quality sound from a very small speaker? Coming from a background in lasers and electronics, he initially knew little about acoustics.
But approaching the problem through fundamental physics eventually led to the ideas that became SonicEdge.
From quantum optics to deeptech entrepreneurship
Margalit originally comes from electrical engineering. He completed a PhD and then a postdoc in quantum optics at MIT. Over the years, he’s founded several deep-tech companies — in silicon photonics, equipment for solar cell manufacturing, LED packaging and more.
He admits:
“I realised that I was always inventing — whether as a founder or in a leadership role. Today, I hold around 100 patents.
One of my early commercial inventions was chip-scale packaging for cameras. That’s the technology used in most front-facing smartphone cameras today. We developed it back in 2007 while I was working for a US company.”
In 2010, he worked with another US company that essentially bought ideas.
“We built a global network of inventors. Over several years, we sold hundreds of ideas. Some evolved into patents and commercial products.
The original patents behind SonicEdge were actually funded through that company. It took a couple of years before I bought them back and began developing the technology independently, which really started around 2019.”
Earbuds: the first proving ground for SonicEdge’s technology
While SonicEdge offers a difference across multiple categories — earbuds, hearing aids, glasses, and even larger speakers, the low-hanging fruit is earbuds.
Traditional speakers use a membrane that moves back and forth, pushing air to create pressure waves. When you shrink that design, performance drops dramatically. SonicEdge approached it differently. Its speaker consists of thousands of microscopic elements — about the width of a human hair — on a millimetre-scale chip.
According to Margalit, very small structures are good at generating ultrasound.
“But humans can’t hear ultrasound. Our key invention is an acoustic modulator. We generate ultrasound — which contains all the necessary pressure variations — and selectively extract the correct pressures at the right time to reconstruct audible sound."
Physically speaking, the company has built a very high-speed air pump operating at around 400,000 cycles per second. Traditional membranes operate around 1,000 cycles per second.
“Instead of scaling size, we scale speed. That allows us to replace a large membrane with an ultra-fast pump,” explained Margalit.
The result is smaller speakers with broader bandwidth, higher efficiency, and no mechanical vibration. And, the tech is patented.
Margalit says the biggest consumer complaint about earbuds is comfort. After one or two hours, they become uncomfortable.
Hearing aids, on the other hand, can be worn for 10 hours — but they don’t deliver the same sound quality. The second issue is bandwidth. Most earbuds today don’t reproduce frequencies above 10 kHz well.
Some companies are introducing dual-driver systems to improve quality — such as combining a 10 mm and a 6 mm driver — but this increases complexity and size. SonicEdge’s technology enables much smaller form factors while delivering full-spectrum sound up to 20 kHz. It also offers greater comfort, no mechanical vibration, potentially improved noise cancellation, and easier integration and manufacturing for device makers.
SonicEdge offers several advantages, including no mechanical vibration, potentially lower power consumption, a slim form factor, and greater flexibility in integration.
From earbuds to hearing aids
Margalit admits that with multiple potential markets, prioritising is a major challenge.
“We’re a relatively small company with offices in Denmark and Israel. Denmark provides world-class electronics expertise. Israel leads the MEMS development.
The earbud market alone is about 300 million units annually — that’s roughly 600 million speakers. It’s a very significant opportunity. Hearing aids are important, but smaller — around 25–30 million units annually. It’s a slower-moving market dominated by five major companies."
Interestingly, three of those companies are Danish, and SonicEdge’s investors and board members have deep relationships in that ecosystem.
“So we understand the hearing market well. It’s meaningful, but our primary initial focus is earbuds,” shared Margalit.
A new approach to in-ear sound
Have you ever bought a pair of earbuds – AirPods, Beats, or others – only for them to constantly slip out, fail at noise cancellation, or make running a nightmare?
Last year SonicEdge partnered with Earfab to fix this once and for all. Using just images from your phone, Earfab can 3D-scan your ears to create fully custom-fit earbuds, while SonicEdge’s fingertip-sized MEMS deliver unmatched sound quality.
A custom fit sits naturally in the ear, so you can wear earbuds for extended periods without discomfort. A precise seal within the ear canal also improves sound quality.
“It creates a closed fit, which enhances bass response, passive noise isolation, and overall acoustic performance,” explained Margalit.
The companies also believe their combined approach could simplify the design of high-end audio devices.
“In high-end in-ear monitors for musicians, you often find five to ten tiny drivers covering different frequency bands. With our technology, you could potentially replace all of those with a single device.”
While the professional audio and custom-fit market may be relatively niche, the companies see it as an ideal proving ground.
“It’s not the largest market,” SonicEdge adds, “but it’s an excellent showcase for what the combined technologies can achieve.”
Why voice is the future of smart glasses
That said, SonicEdge recently secured a multimillion-dollar contract to adapt its speakers for glasses. For years, smart glasses struggled to go mainstream. The main issue was the display and usability. Most glasses today use traditional micro-speakers, not bone conduction, as many assume. Those speakers must be high-power because of acoustic leakage and privacy constraints.
Margalit believes that “If glasses fulfil their promise, they could become as important as smartphones. That’s why Apple, Google, and Meta are investing heavily — they don’t want to lose control of the interface.”
He admits:
“The glasses opportunity was strategically and financially significant enough that we couldn’t turn it down.”
According to Margalit, Meta turned voice into the modality of choice and showed that you don't necessarily need a screen — AI voice assistants can redefine the interaction.
“We naturally talk to people. So why not talk to our glasses? They can remind us of things, take notes, and provide context. Voice is central.”
For glasses, Margalit contends that there are two main criteria: They must not weigh down the ear.
The speaker must fit in a slim, flexible form factor. SonicEdge speakers weigh about 100 milligrams while standard micro-speakers weigh around 1.5 grams. Its thickness is about 1 millimetre.
SonicEdge expects to bring its first products to market in early 2027. After that, it will expand into smartphones and larger form factors like laptops and tablets.