He made his fortune from the sale of Equitilink, a fund management business, and is on the board of environmental technologies group Phoslock. “Sure, there are a lot of cheesed-off small investors selling small parcels, but I think very few people understood how difficult it would be to pull this off,” he says.
A decade of reasons given by Audio Pixels about why its high-tech audio technology was not ready has made the company the target of ridicule. Traders have taken to social media to suggest its latest statements have been generated by AI platform ChatGPT.
Investors have watched as the company soared to a market capitalisation as high as $900 million, then fell to $200 million, while delivering cumulative losses of about $50 million since 2011. Shares closed down 4.8 per cent on Tuesday at $7.51.
The technology might still be an ingenious idea – vibrating pixels on various frequencies could be able to produce a purely digital sound.
Bart stumbled upon the concept through Israeli engineers Daniel Lewin, Yuval Cohen and Eric Harber in 2006. The former rag trade entrepreneur, professional poker player, and space laser and weapons company chairman, took it upon himself to fund the development of what he would ultimately bill as “digitising the last analogue resource”.
Over the following 14 years, Bart tipped in millions of dollars of his own money, and raised more than $32 million from public investors.
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When the stock hit the ASX boards – for the second time – in 2011, Audio Pixels told the market it had signed a manufacturing agreement with Sony. Investors were thrilled. Sony, they were told, was gearing up to mass-manufacture the digital chips.
“If all goes as planned ... the samples of playing chips will become available for market exposure in the last quarter [of 2012],” Bart wrote in a statement to the ASX, sending stock soaring to 37 per cent from $6.55 to $8.98.
Rather than deliver any sample chips, however, at the end of 2012 Audio Pixels banked $5.6 million in a fresh capital raise. The new money, Bart insisted, would boost the company towards the production phase.
It was around this time, one fund manager who spoke to the Financial Review on condition of anonymity says, that Bart was offering demonstrations of Audio Pixel’s digital speakers and suggesting the company was in discussions with Apple.
“The ‘demonstration’ involved him pulling out an iPad and showing me a video of the speakers, supposedly, playing some music. It was less than convincing,” the fund manager says, describing the company’s market capitalisation as “astonishing”.
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As 2013 ticked over into 2014, Bart and his team seemed to discover how difficult it was to transplant vibrating pixels on to a microchip that could then be installed into every speaker on Earth.
The company’s chief technology officer, Yuval Cohen, implored investors to hold on.
“We simply need a bit more time to accumulate and analyse the massive amounts of data needed to appropriately analyse and adjust the electronics and algorithms in a manner that is compliant and advantageous to the newly found phenomenon,” he said weeks before Christmas in 2014.
Throughout 2015, market announcements became less frequent, and the ones that were released often started with: “Achievements during the reporting period were technical in nature…”
These technical developments involved thousands of tests in Audio Pixel’s uniquely designed laboratory; a “cleanroom” that would eradicate any other sound waves that might interfere with the chip.
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It was in 2016 that Audio Pixels’ share price really soared – up 313 per cent to $31 in two months. A chip demonstration, it seemed, was finally imminent. But no chips emerged.
That same year, a new fabricator – Tower Semiconductor – was brought on to help match the real-world products with the “revolutionary” designs, but 2017, 2018 and 2019 were plagued with frequent delays. Dissipation layers needed refining. Pixel yields were below expectations.
“Happy birthday” sounds were audible, but not yet up to “complex” music levels. “Sound is unacceptably noisy and muddled and needs improvement before any public demonstration,” Bart told investors, assuring them of a demonstration before the end of 2019.
Once COVID-19 hit, Audio Pixel testing came to a standstill. Bart told investors two products had actually been completed, but demonstrations could only happen in-person in Israel. Sound quality over the internet was “suboptimal”.
The hope now is a deal with EarthMountain – a Chinese fabricator that has poured a rumoured $30 million into a new manufacturing facility. EarthMountain has become a shareholder to the tune of $3 million (though the money hasn’t landed yet).
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But whether this partnership finally brings the vibrating pixel chips into being – and into the hands of customers – is yet to be seen.
“It’s a frustrating time,” Freedman says. “But the upside is enormous. It’s a matter of trusting the team obsessed with this goal.”

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform.