Ambient Sound Investments

Ambient Sound Investments (ASI) was established in 2003 as an equal partnership by four founding engineers at Skype Technologies to hold a minority stake in Skype. At the end of 2005 ASI sold its stake to eBay and now operates as a private investment vehicle. Today we are a team of about 10 people managing 100 million Euros of the partners' assets and growing an independent investment vehicle spanning multiple generations. 

A different type of venture firm

Because our partners are investing their own money, ASI is not a fund. In fact, we tend to view ourselves more as a 'family trust' than a typical venture capital firm.

We are not constrained by a particular industry focus
While our partners' track record of building cutting-edge P2P networks together certainly roots us in technology, we are ultimately free to invest in the best people and ideas from all walks of life. See our portfolio.

We don't adhere to a predetermined investment cycle
While most venture firms are obligated to exit their investments after a set number of years, our investments don't have a sell-by date: we can and therefore plan to invest for the longer term, where appropriate.

We frequently co-invest with other leading investors, and are always happy to consider doing so.

Our investment focus

Our investment targets tend to:

  • Have R&D at the core of their nature
  • Be in the seed or early stage of the company life-cycle
  • Be built by people who want to be global leaders in their field
  • Have technology or technology-based service providers for their customers
  • Be based in Eastern Europe, Russia or Asia, and demonstrating global ambition
  • Own intellectual property in their core technology area
Have a look at our current investments and incubator projects.

ASI Private Equity

Established in 2006, ASI Private Equity AS (ASIPEAS) was conceived to allow a number of our founding friends and colleagues from Skype to invest jointly with us. Working closely together at a heady pace in the early days of Skype aligned our thinking — we often share mutual interests and opinions when considering technology projects.

Critically, ASIPEAS extends our entrepreneurs' contact network and competence base sevenfold — ASIPEAS currently encompasses around 30 investors. As a closed investment vehicle, ASIPEAS does not solicit funds from the general public.

ASI Incubator

We created the Incubator in mid-2007 to provide people and brains for projects that we really like from the perspective of their concept and idea but where we did not see them as likely investment targets since they were lacking key people on the team. We help these projects get on their feet and then go forward independently - we aim to spin projects off from the Incubator to become independent startups.  Have a look at our Incubator projects here.