ROLI Acquires Ultraleap to Advance Gesture-Based Music Tech

• ROLI has acquired Ultraleap, integrating its mid-air haptics and hand-tracking technology into ROLI's music platform.
• Ultraleap co-founder Tom Carter joins ROLI as Chief Technology Officer and board member.

ROLI has acquired Ultraleap, the company behind Leap Motion and known for its hand-tracking and mid-air haptics tech. The acquisition comes after years of the two teams working together on a shared goal of using gesture to change how people create and play music.

ROLI builds digital instruments like the Seaboard and Airwave, designed to let people shape sound through touch and gesture. Airwave uses Ultraleap’s hand-tracking technology to let users interact with music software using mid-air gestures, without touching a surface. Products using this system range from the Airwave module at $349 USD to full bundles like the ROLI Piano + Airwave set, which sells for $758 USD.

Founder Roland Lamb shared that the bringing together the two teams will allow for faster product development, tighter tech alignment, and a stronger foundation for future innovations. In a blog post, he described the deal as the realization of a long-held goal to blend vision technology with expressive music tools.

"Music is the interaction of gestures and instruments. Human movement and touch, and human technologies come together with cultural traditions to produce meaningful sound. And this meaningful sound is a powerful force in human life, connecting us within, building connections between us, and connecting us to the beyond. I always felt that in time, vision technology would come to transform embodied music making," said Roland Lamb on the ROLI blog.

Ultraleap’s Tom Carter now joins ROLI as CTO and board member. The combined team will focus on expanding ROLI’s Airwave platform and building new tools that use gesture recognition and AI to reimagine music learning and expression.

🌀 Tom’s Take:

Spatial tech is changing every facet of our lives, including how we learn and play music. This acquisition strengthens an already powerful partnership and is sure to spark new innovations in how spatial computing shapes instruments and musical expression.

Source: ROLI