To go beyond 'reinventing the piano', UK music tech startup ROLI acquires software framework JUCE

British music tech startup ROLI, the company behind the intriguing Seaboard GRAND instrument, aims to go way beyond reimagining the piano and has acquired C++ framework JUCE to that end.
To go beyond 'reinventing the piano', UK music tech startup ROLI acquires software framework JUCE

More acquisition news today, this time coming from the Slush conference in Helsinki, Finland.

ROLI, the London-based music technology company behind Seaboard GRAND, an innovative instrument that aims to reimagine the traditional piano keyboard, has acquired JUCE.

JUCE is a C++ framework that ROLI claims can - and I quote from the buzzword-laden press release - "reshape human-computer interaction".

To be fair, the JUCE framework is currently used by audio companies such as Korg, Pioneer, Akai Professional and M-Audio, so there might be something to it.

ROLI certainly has the funds for small acquisitions like this, having raised a total of $16.5 million from investors like Balderton Capital, Universal Music, Index Ventures and Horizons Ventures.

The company's founder and CEO, Roland Lamb, says the move will enable ROLI to both extend the compatibility of its Seaboard GRAND product with existing third-party software, and develop JUCE as the leading toolkit for creating next-gen interfaces.

Julian Storer, founder of Raw Materials Software and single-handedly the creator of the JUCE library, will be joining the ROLI team as Head of Software Architecture.

JUCE won't be just for audio, Storer comments: "We're tremendously excited about the creative possibilities that will be unleashed as we build new features, better documentation, code examples, and templates that will help to establish JUCE as a leading C++ framework, not just for audio, but for a wide range of diverse applications, from graphics to gaming to embedded systems.”

Sounds exciting to me.

Featured image credit: ROLI

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