In the gentle hills southeast of Florence, transducer manufacturer B&C Speakers, an Italian company renowned for making technically advanced components for high-end audio OEMs around the world, has linked up with an upstart rollout from the University of Venice to discover and develop new magnetic materials using artificial intelligence that can give B&C Speakers a competitive edge in its future product development. The strategic partnership could become a breakthrough project for RARA Factory, a deep-tech startup that develops new advanced materials through a proprietary platform based on artificial intelligence, automated synthesis and advanced characterization.
Announced in July, the agreement provides for an initial phase of six months of research and development, co-financed by B&C Speakers, aimed at designing new custom-made magnetic materials for its own applications. The goal of the collaboration is to develop a new generation of high-performance magnets that are free of rare earths, identifying new alloys able to deliver the performance required by professional transducers and to help reduce dependence on critical raw materials. At the end of the development phase, B&C Speakers will benefit from an exclusivity in the electroacoustic transducer sector lasting five years, renewable for a further five.
RARA Factory’s platform integrates three phases of the materials discovery process into a single workflow: Compute, Create, Characterize. In the first phase, proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms explore the vast space of possible element combinations, identifying new alloys with the desired properties. The most promising formulations are then synthesized through a high-throughput automated platform, which verifies their real producibility. Finally, the materials are characterized using advanced, proprietary techniques to validate their physical properties, confirm the model’s predictions and feed a proprietary database that makes the system progressively more accurate.
In less than a year of operation, RARA Factory reports that it has already produced and characterized more than 26,000 new synthetic materials, representing training data for AI that is unique in the world. Several innovative magnetic alloys have already been identified, showing characteristics that are particularly promising for applications in the electroacoustic transducer sector. The collaboration with B&C Speakers aims to further refine these materials and represents one of the first industrial applications of the platform in the field of custom-developed magnetic materials.
“This agreement confirms the uniqueness of the process developed by RARA Factory, an artificial intelligence that is grounded in real data and that drives a real process, in which the new materials do not exist only on a computer but are actually synthesized and measured with unrivaled efficiency on the international scene. The fact that a demanding market leader like B&C Speakers chose us is a recognition of the soundness of our approach, because it comes from a company with the expertise to properly assess it” said Stefano Bonetti, founder and Chairman/CTO of RARA Factory.
“The partnership with B&C Speakers is the first industrial validation of our technology, a leader in its own segment choosing RARA Factory to reduce dependence on rare earths in a real product line. A clear demonstration that our approach meets market demand where qualification cycles and performance specifications allow no compromise, and it is the first industrial link in a value chain we are building between research, innovation and enterprise” said Michele Bugliesi, founder and CEO of RARA Factory.
“For B&C Speakers, this partnership represents a strategic investment in the search for materials capable of supporting the technological evolution of our products. The ability to develop magnetic alloys designed around the specific needs of our applications, through an approach based on artificial intelligence, opens up new prospects for innovation,” said Lorenzo Coppini, CEO of B&C Speakers. “We chose RARA Factory because it has developed a technology platform capable of accelerating the discovery and validation of new materials. A collaboration that strengthens our ability to innovate in a highly specialized sector such as electroacoustic transducers”.
B&C Speakers
Designing its electroacoustic transducers primarily for professional audio system manufacturers, the B&C Group employs approximately 353 people, around 10% of whom are engaged in research and development. Design, manufacturing and quality control activities are carried out at its facilities in Florence, Reggio Emilia, Eminence (Kentucky, USA) and DongGuan (China). Products are marketed under the Group’s B&C, 18SOUND, EMINENCE and CIARE brands. A significant portion of production is developed in collaboration with customers based on dedicated application specifications. The company is also present in the United States and Brazil through controlled companies that carry out commercial activities.
The company’s primary line consists of high frequency drivers and horns, coaxial components and cone drivers, while it also produces a line of low frequency drivers. Its engineers have made refinements in areas such as high frequency diaphragm technology, cone geometry, magnet assemblies, chassis design and other aspects to develop its line-up of components. A few examples are cited in this article.
RARA Factory
Shown at top, the new RARA Factory laboratory was officially opened in July 2025. Founded and spun out from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice July 2024, it is based at the VEGA Science and Technology Park in Marghera (Venice), with a team of 10 people dedicated to research and development. In December 2025 it closed a seed investment round funded by Primo Capital SGR, CDP Venture Capital, Motor Tech Accelerator and a group of business angels. It is Italy’s first company solely focused on researching, developing and prototyping sustainable materials to substitute rare earths and other critical substances.
At the core of its technology is a patented algorithm that can identify alternative materials to rare earths by combining elements readily found in nature, while maintaining equal or better properties than traditional alloys. Thanks to a combination of expertise, from condensed matter physics to theoretical physics and generative artificial intelligence, the algorithm has been successfully tested on over 45,000 materials — demonstrating its potential to revolutionize the sourcing of critical raw materials in strategic sectors, says the company. It aims to achieve material cost savings of 30–40%.
“We’re going after abundance: large quantities of easily available elements such as silicon, aluminium, iron and calcium,” said Stefano Bonetti, founder and scientific director of RARA Factory, and Professor of Experimental Condensed Matter Physics at Ca’ Foscari. “Our first goal is to find alternative magnets to those made with neodymium, for use in the automotive and renewable energy sectors. However, our method has a much wider reach, and can be applied to any critical material we aim to replace – such as lithium, coltan or cobalt.”
The new laboratory is equipped with advanced computing systems for designing new materials using the AI model, as well as tools for synthesizing new alloys and facilities for measuring the magnetic, thermal and optical properties of the materials produced. It is capable of generating around 150 samples per day and over 10,000 by the end of the year.
RARA Factory is now fully operational, with about ten team members, over €2 million in equipment, a patented algorithm, and the interest of several investors who immediately saw the project’s great potential. Our next goal is to expand further, supported by national and regional stakeholders,” said Bugliese.
