In October 2020, the hearables industry acquired its first unicorn. Eargo, a startup making hearing aids, had a successful IPO, with its market valuation rising to $1.3 billion. It’s been on a roller-coaster ever since, nudging $3 billion last month before sliding back to $2.3 billion. Some might argue that it’s not the first hearables unicorn, as Apple acquired Beats for $3 billion back in 2014, but Beats was never really a unicorn. Beats had received a $500 million investment from Carlyle the year before, which gave it a valuation at just over $1 billion, but a large chunk of that valuation was based on their music service, not their hardware. Ironically, the success of Airpods means that Apple now almost certainly outsells its acquisition, making Beats the junior hearables partner. We’ll probably never know whether Beats played any part in the Airpod’s development, or whether it was a purely internal Apple development, but that’s history. The question on everybody’s lips in the hearables industry is “Who will be the next unicorn?”
