Boulder audio subscription company raises $16.5M in long-delayed IPO

BOULDER — Auddia Inc. (Nasdaq: AUUD) raised its maximum target of $16.5 million in its debut on the Nasdaq Capital Market last month, more than a year after it first filed to go public.

The Boulder company ended its IPO by selling 3,991,818 shares at $4.125 each, which all included a warrant to buy another share within five years at the holder’s discretion. The company later said that founder and board chairman Jeff Thramann invested $4 million in that IPO, giving him a stake in the company of about 15%.

Auddia’s smartphone apps use artificial intelligence to identify when an Internet-streamed radio station is in a commercial break and play music over it in exchange for a monthly subscription fee from listeners. A portion of those funds is given to participating stations to cover the lost listenership for the ads.

Founded in 2012, Auddia believes that it can capture some of the estimated $11.2 billion in subscription revenue generated in 2018 by ad-free streaming services made by Spotify Technology SA (NYSE: SPOT), Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: APPL) or Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: SIRI) and redirect it to ad-supported radio.

It also has a podcast repository called “Vodacast” that syncs videos and images to a podcast episode at the publisher’s discretion, giving those podcast episodes more content for the listener.

Auddia first filed for its IPO in January 2020, seeking to sell 1.2 million shares for maximum proceeds amount of $6 million. The company then filed multiple extensions with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the past several months to keep its IPO active before the debut, a common tactic for soon-to-be public companies.

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