sensiBel is a Norwegian semiconductor company that makes optical MEMS microphones - tiny chip-scale devices that use a laser and photodetector to sense a diaphragm's motion instead of the electrical (capacitive) method used in almost every microphone for the past century. Its flagship SBM100B is billed as the world's first production optical MEMS microphone, delivering studio-grade specs (80 dBA SNR, 146 dB acoustic overload point, 132 dB dynamic range) in a package small enough for earbuds, laptops and microphone arrays. Spun out of Norwegian research institute SINTEF in 2017, sensiBel sells to audio, consumer-electronics and pro-audio manufacturers and counts Sennheiser among its investors.
Kieran Harney is the CEO of sensiBel, an Oslo-based semiconductor company that builds the world's first studio-quality optical MEMS microphone. A three-decade veteran of the MEMS industry, he founded the MEMS microphone business at Analog Devices in 2005, which was acquired by InvenSense in 2013 and later became part of TDK. He joined sensiBel in 2022, rose from COO to Chief Commercial Officer, and took over as CEO in September 2025 with a mandate to scale the company's optical microphone technology from evaluation kits to mass-market production.