Press room

Eden Prairie, Minnesota (March 23, 2023) – Starkey is proud to announce that it has received two Artificial Intelligence Excellence awards in both the product and individual categories. The first accolade was given to Starkey’s all-new, completely redesigned hearing technology, Genesis AI, which was introduced just last month. The second was awarded to Starkey’s Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering, Achin Bhowmik, Ph.D., who leads the company’s Research and Development teams. This is the second consecutive year Starkey has been named an AI Excellence award winner, which is presented by the Business Intelligence Group to recognize organizations, products, and people who bring artificial intelligence to life and apply it to solve real problems.

“A new beginning has arrived at Starkey,” said Brandon Sawalich, President and CEO. “I want to thank the team for pushing the edge of what was possible with Genesis AI and congratulate Achin for his dedication and leadership that made this happen. We set out to engineer a product from the inside out, and as a result, we’ve created the smartest, most intuitive product, worthy of recognition for excellence.”

Starkey’s Genesis AI is leading the hearing industry in redefining the future of hearing health, not just with incremental improvements, but with breakthrough benefits. The five-year journey to the recent launch began in 2017 when Achin Bhowmik joined Starkey. The former Intel Corporation executive and Brandon Sawalich kept the project under wraps, secretly developing and testing the new technology for years. The all-new Starkey Neuro Processor within Genesis AI features the industry’s most advanced processor technology, which mimics the function of the central auditory system through an on-chip Deep Neural Network accelerator. It is the smallest processor ever by Starkey, but also the most powerful with 6X more transistors. It is also loaded with 5X more computational memory and 10X the amount of non-volatile memory. Moreover, with a power-efficient architecture, Genesis AI also offers more than double the battery life.

“Congratulations to the entire Starkey team for your tireless work in pushing technological boundaries,” said Dr. Bhowmik. “We have reimagined and rearchitected the hearing aid, creating technology with state-of-the art AI that learns and adapts to understand and process sound just like the human brain does. With Genesis AI, we have created the industry’s best performing multifunctional hearing devices on the market.”

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About Starkey

Starkey is a privately held, global hearing technology company headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Founded by Bill Austin in 1967, Starkey is known for its innovative design, development and distribution of comprehensive digital hearing systems. Led today by President and CEO Brandon Sawalich, Starkey is the only American-owned provider of hearing technologies. The company has more than 5,000 employees, operates 29 facilities and does business in more than 100 markets worldwide. Learn more at starkey.com.