Samsung acquires Greece’s tech firm Innoetics for around $50 million

Greek text-to-speech start up company Innoetics has been acquired by consumer electronics giant Samsung for just under $50 million.

Founded in 2006 by four Greek scientists Aimilios Chalamandaris, Pirros Tsiakoulis, Sotiris Karabetsos, and Spyros Raptis, Innoetics builds text-to-speech and voice recognition technologies and is a spin out from the Athena Research & Innovation Centre in Athens. The company claims the deal is the highest exit for a startup from a Greek academic and research centre.

The company will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary of the Korean electronics giant and will remain based in Athens.

“We are very proud and excited for this unique success of Innoetics,” said Yannis Ioannidis, President and General Director of the Athena Research & Innovation Center, which he said will continue to foster further research that leads to successful companies.

“Athena will build on this experience to promote and support new high-risk out-of-the-box efforts of its researchers, and to augment its capacity to turn research results into efficient

Terms of the deal — which officially closed last Friday — have not been disclosed, but it is understood that it’s one of the bigger exits for a tech start up in Greece, coming in at just under the $50 million mark.