Venerable British audio maker Bowers & Wilkins finds a surprise buyer in EVA Automation, a tiny Silicon Valley-based startup founded all of 2 years ago by ex-Facebook CFO Gideon Yu.

Financial details of the deal are not available, but a 20% stake in B&W was sold by Caledonia Investments for £24 million cash and £500000 dividend, suggesting B&W is worth around £122.5m.

Little is known about EVA Automation, other than that it employs 40 staff and has a vague mission of "making products that will change how people interact and think about the home." Post-acquisition Bowers & Wilkins chairman Joe Atkins takes over as CEO of the combined company, with Yu as executive chairman. It will also retain all 1100 B&W staff.

"We will have much, much more to announce when the time is right about our vision and our products," a post by Yu on the EVA website reads. "In the meantime, we will continue to work hard on developing a truly special, highly integrated, and easy to use home A/V experience that I know you’ll love."

Of course, a question remains-- why would a company as respected and well established as B&W sell to a startup that's both young and virtually unknown? Atkins actually admitted the audio maker was looking for a buyer in an August 2015 interview with The Guardian (he even mentioned French luxury conglomerate LVMH as an ideal owner) but that was before the deal with EVA... since Atkins met only Yu 30 days ago.

As for the post-acquisition B&W, Atkins tells Bloomberg the company plans to integrate audiophile-grade hardware with EVA-powered cloud-based smarts. The first of such products to hit the market by mid-2017.

Go EVA Automation Joins Forces With B&W

Go Speaker Maker B&W Sells Out to Tiny Silicon Valley Startup (Bloomberg)