SONOS

Sonos was founded in 2002 in Santa Barbara, California, by John MacFarlane, Tom Cullen, Trung Mai, and Craig Shelburne — four engineers who had previously built Software.com, which merged with Phone.com to form Openwave in 2000. The founders' goal was to make it easy to play any song in any room of a home. At the time, listening to music throughout a home required either high volume or complex cabling — Sonos set out to solve that problem through wireless technology.

The company's key early innovation was adapting mesh networking — a technology previously used only in military and mobile environments — to home audio, allowing speakers to communicate with one another without a central controller. Sonos launched its first product, the ZP100 music player, in January 2005, and has since accumulated over 4,000 patents in audio technology. Milestones include the 2009 PLAY:5 all-in-one speaker, the 2015 Trueplay room-tuning technology, Dolby Atmos support from 2020, and the 2024 introduction of the Sonos Ace headphones.

Sonos today offers a broad range of wireless audio products including soundbars, subwoofers, portable speakers, in-ceiling and in-wall architectural speakers, and headphones. The system supports Wi-Fi streaming with optional Bluetooth on select models and integrates with major streaming services as well as Sonos Radio, the brand's own curated streaming service.