Ohio startup raises $15m to put out fires with 20 Hz sound

Sonic Fire Tech, based in Ohio, said on Monday it had raised $15 million led by The O.H.I.O. Fund, with Khosla Ventures also taking part.

The company raised a $3.5 million seed round in October.

Its system replaces water and chemicals with noise. A generator pushes inaudible sound through PVC pipes run across the ceiling. When sensors detect a fire, infrasonic waves of around 20 Hz hit the flames.

The pitch is not just speed. It is the absence of a mess afterwards.

Commercial kitchens can face months of cleanup and restoration after a fire. Remington Bixby Hotchkis, the company's chief operating officer, told TechCrunch that around 75% of them never reopen.

The money will go on hiring and on the testing needed to win approval from the National Fire Protection Association, which writes the model codes that fire departments across the United States adopt.

That process usually takes about three years. Co-founder and chief executive Geoff Bruder told TechCrunch he expects Sonic Fire Tech's to be considerably shorter, because lab tests of his system require no cleanup between runs.

Insurers are the other gatekeeper. The company says it is in talks with them about whether buildings fitted with the system would qualify for lower premiums.

Bruder argues the domestic case is narrow and cheap. He says half of home fires start in the kitchen, from grease or electrical faults, and that even a small unit covering only the kitchen would cut the risk of a house being lost.

On his account, sprinklers of the kind now being installed cannot deal with those fires.

About 500 jurisdictions currently mandate interior fire protection systems, according to the company.

Lithium-ion batteries are the harder problem, and the claim here is deliberately modest. In the small number of tests run so far, Bruder said, the system does not extinguish a lithium-ion fire but contains it.

Sonic Fire Tech is building versions for commercial interiors, kitchens and homes, for both new buildings and retrofits. A system to protect the outside of houses in wildfire areas is moving more slowly while the company waits for time at a suitable testing lab.

For any founder selling hardware into the built environment, the shape of this is familiar. The product may work in the lab, but the revenue arrives only after a standards body signs off and an insurer decides the discount is worth writing down. That is a three-year queue Sonic Fire Tech has $15 million to sit in.