Today we get to share the news: Bose Professional has acquired Fulcrum Acoustic, the Massachusetts-based maker of high-performance loudspeakers, amplifiers, and immersive audio systems.
On a map, this is a short trip. Fulcrum designs and builds its loudspeakers in Whitinsville, Massachusetts, about half an hour down the road from our headquarters in Hopkinton. Two companies, a few miles apart, working on the same problem from different angles: how to make demanding spaces sound the way they should.
The idea that built Fulcrum
Fulcrum Acoustic was founded in 2008 by Stephen Siegel, Dave Gunness, and Chris Alfiero around a conviction that was unusual at the time: treat digital signal processing as a design ingredient from the very first sketch. Every Fulcrum loudspeaker is engineered together with its processing, which gives the team greater freedom to optimize attributes such as directivity, size, efficiency, and sound quality without accepting some of the traditional compromises between them.
That idea runs through a catalog of around 130 products, most of them designed by Gunness himself. It shows up in coaxial designs that deliver sound from a single coherent point. It shows up in patented Passive Cardioid Technology, which keeps low-frequency energy off stages and walls without extra amplifier channels. And it shows up in Temporal Equalization, or TQ, which grew out of Gunness’s earlier work on loudspeaker transient response and uses precise DSP filters to correct time- and frequency-domain behavior.
You’ll find the results in the rooms that are hardest to get right: reverberant worship spaces, historic theaters, stadium bowls with neighbors close by, nightclubs, performing arts centers. More than a thousand Fulcrum loudspeakers carried the sound at Houston’s NRG Stadium during the 2026 World Cup. The main system at the Rose Bowl is Fulcrum.
Why these two companies fit
Ask around the industry about which companies are doing the most interesting work in loudspeakers, and Fulcrum comes up frequently. The engineering earns that reputation, but so does the way they work: research first, details sweated, and a long record of making the industry’s most difficult rooms sound right.
Dave Gunness recently said, “the job is to be the company your customers need you to be.” (His words, not ours, but we know exactly what he means.)
That way of working mirrors the company Bose Professional has been building since becoming independent in 2023 — rebuilt around the people who design, install, and rely on professional audio, and around the belief that great products come from teams who care about every detail. When we looked at Fulcrum, we recognized the same belief in practice, in spaces where we want to do more.
“We’ve admired Fulcrum for years — the products of course, but also the way their team approaches the customer experience,” said John Maier, Chief Executive Officer of Bose Professional. “They’ve earned one of the most respected names in performance audio the honest way: great engineering and a habit of showing up for their customers. Our job now is to protect what makes Fulcrum special and put our full scale behind it, so more people around the world get to hear what this team can do.”
What this means for Fulcrum customers
Continuity. On day one, Fulcrum Acoustic continues as Fulcrum Acoustic — the brand, the products, and the team behind them. Projects in motion stay in motion, supported through the same channels as today. Design and manufacturing continue in Whitinsville.
What changes is what stands behind the brand. Fulcrum now has the scale, resources, and global distribution of Bose Professional behind it. The goal is straightforward: put Fulcrum loudspeakers in front of more ears around the world and give the team more room to do the work it’s known for.
What this means for Bose Professional customers
Our portfolio grows in the direction of performance. Fulcrum brings nearly two decades of expertise in the spaces where pattern control, output, and sound quality are of great importance — stadiums and arenas, theaters and performing arts centers, houses of worship, clubs — along with immersive audio and active acoustics technology that opens the door to new kinds of projects. Our evolving ecosystem and growing portfolio of solutions will benefit from the addition of the Fulcrum portfolio.
“From our first conversations, it was clear Bose Professional understood what Fulcrum is and why it works,” said Stephen Siegel, co-founder and president of Fulcrum Acoustic. “Our customers choose Fulcrum for the engineering, the craft, and the way we stand behind our work — none of that changes. Now we get to bring that work to a global audience at a much faster pace than we could on our own.”
“I’ve spent my career chasing the same problem: making loudspeakers behave the way physics says they shouldn’t,” said Dave Gunness, co-founder of Fulcrum Acoustic. “That work continues in Whitinsville. And a few ideas that have been waiting in my notebook for years just became possible.”
A step on a longer road
Bose Professional has spent the past three years rebuilding itself as an independent company — new leadership, new systems, and a sharper focus on the real-world work of professional audio. Fulcrum is our first acquisition since then — a deliberate step in that reinvention, taken with people who share our values.
Early next year, that road reaches another milestone, when Bose Professional becomes 802 LABS. Fulcrum Acoustic will be part of that future as we all share the same conviction: great sound is made by people who care about every detail.
Starting today, we make it together.
