Product Update

Is Light Lead Still in Business? (2026 Update)

Is Light Lead from Dragons’ Den still around in 2026? The deal it made, the dragons who invested, and where to buy Light Lead today.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 10 May 20266 min read

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Light Lead, an analogue optical cable for musical instruments, pitched in series 14 asking for £70,000 for 35 percent of the business, and landed a deal with Touker Suleyman at exactly those terms. It is a genuinely clever piece of audio engineering. Whether the company behind it is still actively trading today, however, is a harder question to answer with confidence.

The Short Answer

This one is genuinely unclear, and it would be dishonest to state it plainly either way. There are signs the business has gone quiet in recent years, including reports that its official website and Facebook page are no longer working, but there is no definitive, current confirmation that the company has formally closed either. If you are trying to buy a Light Lead cable today, be prepared for the possibility that the direct channels no longer function.

The Pitch in the Den

Danielle Barnet, singer with Urban Cookie Collective, and David Holmes, the band's sound engineer, pitched Light Lead in series 14, episode 2, under the company name Iconic Sound. Their product carries audio down a fibre-optic cable as an analogue light signal rather than through a traditional copper conductor, which the founders claimed eliminated capacitance, signal loading and microphonics, all common gripes among musicians about instrument cable quality.

It is a technically ambitious pitch for the Den, closer to a niche pro-audio engineering story than the consumer products the show usually favours, and it clearly impressed at least one Dragon enough to back it.

The Deal

Touker Suleyman offered £70,000 for 35 percent of the business, matching the founders' ask exactly, and the deal was accepted on the day. Suleyman's background is in fashion and retail rather than audio technology, so this was more a bet on the founders and the novelty of the product than an investment drawing on direct category expertise.

What the Evidence Shows Since Then

In the years after the pitch aired, discussion among guitarists and audio engineers in online forums has noted that Light Lead's website and Facebook page stopped working. That is a real, if informal, signal, and it lines up with the fact that recent, dated confirmation of active sales is difficult to find.

At the same time, an absence of confirmed recent sales activity is not the same as documented proof of closure. We have not found a Companies House dissolution record, a public statement from the founders about winding down, or any other definitive source confirming Light Lead or Iconic Sound has formally ceased trading. The honest position is that the record is inconclusive rather than negative.

Why This Is a Genuinely Hard Category

A pro-audio accessory aimed specifically at musicians is a narrow niche even within an already niche instrument accessories market. Selling a premium instrument cable at a meaningfully higher price than a standard copper lead requires convincing a genuinely sceptical community of players that the sound difference is real and worth paying for, which is a tough, ongoing marketing task rather than a one-off sale.

Products like this often do not close down in a dramatic, documented way. They simply stop being actively marketed and restocked, the website quietly lapses, and the founders move on to other things without a formal announcement, which makes them harder to categorise definitively than a company that goes through a visible liquidation.

What Would Change the Answer

If you have recently bought a Light Lead cable directly from the company, or know of an active listing on a retailer's site, that would be enough to overturn the current read and confirm ongoing trading. Equally, a Companies House filing showing Iconic Sound Ltd has been struck off or dissolved would settle the question the other way. Neither of those pieces of evidence turned up in the sources available for this article.

Until one of those appears, the fairest thing we can do is describe what the record actually shows rather than guess at a tidy answer either way, because a product this specialised, sold mainly direct to musicians rather than through big retail channels, is exactly the kind of business that can go quiet for a long stretch without leaving an obvious public trail behind.

Where Things Stand Now

To recap: Light Lead asked for £70,000 for 35 percent in series 14, and Touker Suleyman backed the pitch at exactly those terms. Since then, signs point toward reduced or halted activity, including a non-functioning website reported by users in music forums, but we have not found definitive confirmation that the company has formally closed.

If you are trying to buy a Light Lead cable today, treat this one with caution. The evidence leans toward the business being dormant or discontinued rather than actively trading, but it stops short of a documented closure, so we are flagging it as unresolved rather than stating a firm answer either way.

Where to buy Light Lead

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See the full Light Lead deal breakdown and term sheet →