A co-founder of Twitter has joined the board of directors of Chroma, a company developing a new kind of audiovisual entertainment tailored to mobile devices. It was revealed today that Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter and Medium, and an angel investor in Chroma alongside Pinterest’s founders, would join the company’s board of directors. Stone brings extensive experience in design, product development, filmmaking, and brand expansion to the table.

Stone, a Google veteran, joined the Blogger team when the company was acquired and then went on to co-found Twitter in 2006.

During his tenure at Twitter, which spanned many years, the firm gained a global user base in the millions. While Twitter was nearing 100 million users in 2011, the entrepreneur decided to leave to work on other ventures with Obvious Corporation, a startup incubator and investment organisation that includes fellow Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and former Twitter executive Jason Goldman. Most notably, the business was responsible for the birth of the popular blogging site Medium. In 2013, however, Stone and the others began to concentrate on other startup ventures. This inspired Stone to develop Jelly, a question and answer app and search engine that was ultimately acquired by Pinterest.

Back in2017, Stone made it known that he will be returning to Twitter in the role of leading strategic vision, brand, and culture. He stayed in this position until 2021.

Stone is the current chairman of the Nominating and Governance Committee of Beyond Meat, and he has invested in a wide range of startups over the years, including Square, Pinterest, Slack, Nest, Intercom, and Beyond Meat.

Stone added that when Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp introduced him to the CEO and creator of the Swedish audiovisual firm Chroma, Andreas Pihlström, that was what first drew him to the business. Formerly of Pinterest, Beats Music, and VSCO, Pihlström had roles as design adviser, designer, and prototyper.

After Stone’s angel investment, the two hit it off and started talking on the phone every month.

“It’s really about finding folks I love working with and spending time with,” added Stone.

The Chroma group considered a number of potential topics, but settled on the convergence of audiovisual and musical technology.

Stone notes that the inspiration for the concept was to make listening to music and other sounds a more participatory and all-encompassing endeavour. In practise, this entails the use of interactive, moving images accompanied by ambient music that invites the user to explore and engage with the digital realm for a number of objectives.

Collaboration with musician Arca resulted in the release of an iOS app last year dubbed Lux Aeterna, which served as the first product to put this theory to the test. The app provides a “meditative digital area” for users to listen to and watch videos related to the music of the Venezuelan producer, DJ, singer, and composer. Users go to the skies as they navigate a virtual environment, accompanied by her music and other soundscapes.

But this doesn’t reveal the whole potential of the technology, which might have a variety of use cases (some of which Chroma is currently studying) that highlight how people could engage with audio and sound for different purposes, such as play, meditation, relaxation, music production, and more. Even though the company’s first product launch will be for mobile devices, Stone thinks the tech will really take off if and when Apple develops its own virtual reality/augmented reality headset.

Once metaverse technology becomes commonplace, I believe it will be a good fit. However, my Apple TV will also allow me to see it. I hope it is added soon. “Wherever there’s top-notch audio and video,” he explained. “Mobile [first] is simply due to the widespread availability of mobile devices.”

Since its founding in 2021, Stockholm-based Chroma has amassed $5.4 million (5.1 million euros) in venture capital from VC firms Singular and Adjacent, Berlin’s angel syndicate SpotiAngels, and other individual investors including Stone and Pinterest co-founders Evan Sharp and Ben Silbermann. Chroma has previously secured pre-seed investment of 1.6 million euros.

Stone, who will be joining the board, anticipates having several monthly meetings with the company in addition to the formal board meetings. He believes he acts more as an adviser than an investor with his angel investments, meaning he welcomes calls from the company’s founders but won’t initiate contact until invited. It was Chroma.

These Chroma employees, I must say, are a veritable fount of original thought. In order to get anything done with such a tiny crew, Stone explains, “the problem has been to limit everything down.” In the meanwhile, we’re concentrating on making music more immersive.

The vast image is like the concept of “sound play” in that it involves participation. Stone alluded that “it’s altering the nature music to make it richer in a three-dimensional sense,” adding that “it’s also visual and… you can do stuff to it.”

Stone, an entrepreneur, has not only been working for a seat on the board, but also “noodling” with a small group of individuals on something for himself. He’s staying quiet about the specifics since the initiative is self-funded and hasn’t formally debuted yet. Stone, on the other hand, claims that he has a keen interest in the developing field of artificial intelligence and in using AI in practical ways.

He claims he hasn’t paid much attention to other recent technological developments like web3 or the metaverse.

“I’m just not into the [web3] lifestyle. Stone said, “There’s just something odd about it.” About the Internet of Things, this person said, “I don’t want a dystopian future where kids are up in the room with a dive mask all day. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t think that’s a smart idea,” he continues.

Biz has extensive background in both technology and design, and he is a great asset to our team. “Together, we will create a new musical paradigm by integrating digital innovation with forward thinking,” Pihlström said in a statement.