Can Bal

These days

I'm a cofounder and the CTO of Tonic, where we're rethinking how people learn music. We make Tonic Music, a practice app that helps musicians connect and grow together, and Tonic Notes, an AI notetaker for music lessons that turns every lesson into a practice plan.

Before that

I led engineering and design at Edge Delta, a Series B observability company. Before that, I spent several years at Twitter as a backend tech lead on the founding teams of Twitter Spaces and Community Notes. We built both from the ground up.

And before industry, I did a PhD at UC San Diego on 3D video compression.

Investing

I angel-invest in ambitious teams. So far:

• Applied Electrodynamics (YC S26) — cameras that see through walls
• Emotion Machine — helping AI connect with people
• Cuttle — personalized laser-cut designs in seconds
• Tonic — the new way to practice music. I invested before I joined the team.

Outside work

I'm part of Looking Up Arts, a collective that builds big, beautiful, interactive sculptures for Burning Man.