ATHENS – The Greek audio software startup Accusonos – founded by two Greeks and with offices in Athens and Reuters while based in Lexington, Massachusetts – is reportedly close to be acquired by Meta Platforms, owned by Facebook.

The news agency Reuters, citing a person familiar with negotiations, who was not named and the newspaper Kathimerini reported there were advanced talks on the purchase of Accusonos that develops software for music production/performance and audio repair.

The company was started by Alexandros Tsilfidis, Elias Kokkinis and Michael Tzannes, and has as shareholders Big Pi Ventures, co-founded by Marco Veremis, whose enterprise value is between 70-100 million euros ($79-113 million) the paper said.

The report said the agreement could be signed on Feb. 4 in what would be another coup for the New Democracy government of Prime Minister Kyriakos  Mitsotakis, who has been wooing foreign investors to speed a recovery during the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.

The report said that Meta wants to invest to develop the company further so it provides the audio solutions required by the world of virtual reality, or metaverse, developed by Facebook.

That would make the Greek company a major player in that technology that brings together reality and 3D virtual worlds tied to social connection, but also further its role in audio services used by major performers.

Meta executives had been in contact with the Greek government in order to evaluate the prospect of establishing a subsidiary in Greece and transferring workers from other parts of the world world, talks headed by Mitsotakis’ top advisor Alexis Patelis, the report added.

Greece has attracted invesments from technology giants such as Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Digital Realty, which acquired the Greek company Lamda Hellix, which the paper said played a key role in Meta decisions.

Facebook spokespeople declined to confirm the deal. “We don’t comment on rumours or speculation,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an email to Reuters, nor did Accusonus.

The company Accusonus developed both standalone software and audio plugins that can be used in digital audio workstation (DAW) programs and in Video editing software.

That includes developed Regroover, a virtual instrument plugin for sampling and beat making that uses Machine Learning to deconstruct or unmix audio loops into their component parts used for both production and remixing.

Another product is Drumatom, software for removing microphone spill (audio) from drum recordings which analyzes multi-channel drum recordings and allows the user to reduce or completely remove drum bleed from microphones.

Meta has been hiring engineers and buying up gaming studios as it expands its virtual reality activities and builds up the architecture that will underpin its metaverse project, an online environment using game and media technology to create spaces for communication and other activities, said Reuters.

On its website, Accusonus says: “We are one of the first companies that ever released commercial Machine Learning audio processing products. Our technology is licensed to some of the world’s biggest consumer media companies, and they support the creativity of literally millions of content creators every day.”