A decade ago, two college students built a fire extinguisher that snuffed out a fire using nothing more than a booming 10-inch subwoofer. The internet lapped it up, and Jimmy Fallon even booked a demonstration for The Tonight Show.
But since that brief viral moment, there hasn’t been much more than a whisper about the technology.
It’s not for lack of trying. The college kids weren’t the first to prove the concept. DARPA was on the case in 2012; and a search of the scientific literature reveals dozens of researchers investigating the idea.
One startup now claims to have cracked the problem. Sonic Fire Tech has built an acoustic fire suppression system that doesn’t just extinguish flames; it that might also protect homes and other buildings from wildfires. The startup has raised a $3.5 million seed round from investors, including Khosla Ventures and Third Sphere, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Wildfires cost the U.S. as much as $424 billion annually. The problem has become so acute in places like California that insurers are refusing to renew policies after repeated blazes have reduced large swathes of the state to ashes.
Sonic Fire Tech has been developing its technology over the last several years. Michael Thomas, who is chairman of the startup’s board, had been tinkering with the idea of using sound to fight fires, and when he hit a wall, he reached out to Geoff Bruder over LinkedIn. Bruder had worked for NASA, where he focused on heat and acoustics.
“This is kind of a new age founding story,” Bruder, the startup’s CEO and CTO, told TechCrunch.
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Bruder was intrigued with Thomas’s idea and set about building a prototype. “I got a subwoofer and some parts from Home Depot and AutoZone and said, ‘Hey, let’s see if we can do any better than other people had,’” Bruder recalled. “We knocked a fire out from seven feet in my driveway.”
The startup soon ditched the subwoofer and moved to lower frequencies. The problem with audible frequencies is that any system powerful enough to suppress a fire would be damaging to people’s hearing, Bruder said. “You’ve basically got to throw a speaker design in the trash and start from scratch,” he said.
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