Sounder.fm, an audio podcasting platform, raised USD 2.15 million in an extended seed funding round led by Ulu Ventures, with participation from Newark Venture Partners and Xoogler.co (which is a community of Google alumni, current Google employees, and Spotify and Google executive angel investors). This round brings the total funding to USD 4 million.

The funds will be used to further develop its proprietary search, speech-to-text, and contextualization technologies, bring its new premium product “Sounder Plus” to market, and launch a new R&D center in New York.

The company also reported that its platform had seen a 35% average increase in streams, an 80% average increase in bid requests for programmatic campaigns, and ad rates more than 25% above the industry average during the quarter to date.

Founded in 2019, Sounder.fm offers an end-to-end audio podcast management and monetization platform for creators. Creators are provided with tools to grow their audiences and boost revenue, including free hosting, transcription, in-stream audio search, and episode soundbite sharing. Also, creators can track their success and audience engagement using the platform’s analytics dashboard, displaying audience demographics, listening habits, and interests. Creators can monetize their podcasts by inserting advertisements or recording personalized brand advertisements. Sounder.fm’s Discovery Suite also includes proprietary search engine optimization (SEO) and the distribution of podcasts to popular listening apps.