Our Investment To Modernize Medical Imaging – Exo Raises $220 Million Series C Financing To Bring Diagnostic-Grade Medical Imaging to the Pocket of Every Caregiver and Clinician Worldwide

By Brent MacDonald – Principal at Rising Tide

Medical imaging for all — it’s a clarion call for change that grows louder every day. It comes from patients seeking greater access to imaging that will help them live healthier lives. It comes from families seeking answers as to why their children are sick. It comes from expectant mothers wanting to monitor the health of their unborn babies. It comes from healthcare professionals on the front lines of care delivery who have long sought tools that are simpler, more affordable and can fit in their pocket.

Exo is pioneering a high-performance handheld ultrasound platform with artificial intelligence. By providing a window into every body, Exo aims to reinvent the way healthcare practitioners use technology to triage, diagnose, and treat patients at the point-of-care. The company is committed to bringing high-quality imaging to healthcare professionals at an affordable price due to its miniaturized piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer (pMUT) technology. By delivering intuitive, high-quality medical imaging, Exo aims to empower healthcare professionals to make critical, real-time decisions that improve patient outcomes. The company envisions clinicians carrying its handheld ultrasound device as an everyday part of their patient care protocol.

75%of the world’s population does not have access to high-quality medical imaging. Existing systems are too expensive and too complex to use on a mass scale.

Traditional ultrasound transducers are built from bulk piezoelectric materials in a process that is inefficient and costly. Advances in micromachining has allowed the development of pMUT sensors and actuators to be formed on a substrate, rather than being machined. Therefore, pMUTs are smaller, less expensive to manufacture and able to generate higher quality images than transducers formed by traditional methods. The key to the Exo platform is its pMUT technology, which gives it the potential to create an ultrasound device that uses a fraction of the power. Exo plans to layer-in artificial intelligence to burn less power, enhance image quality and make the technology as easy to use as a smartphone out of box. The Series C financing will fund the commercialization of the company’s handheld ultrasound device and its intuitive point-of-care ultrasound workflow solution, bringing Exo’s medical imaging exosystem to life. To date, the company has raised over $320 million.

Why We Are Excited:

The founders – Chief Executive Officer Sandeep Akkaraju; Chairman and Chief Visionary Officer Janusz Bryzek, Ph.D.; Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Engineering Yusuf Haque, Ph.D.; and Board Advisor John Kokulis have nearly 20 startups in their collective portfolio, along with several large exits. As a team, they have decades of experience in miniaturizing and driving costs out of complex systems and making them easy to use. Exo believes its technology can be applied not only to diagnostic ultrasound imaging but also to high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), a therapeutic modality used to attack tumors and other lesions deep inside the body. Exo also plans to utilize their novel ultrasound transducer technology for enhanced 3D imaging, which may be performed as an advanced point-of-care test in the future. The planned user interface is a provider’s smartphone or mobile device, allowing it to be used ubiquitously, in a hospital, clinic, or in the field. The global point-of-care diagnostics market size is expected to reach $24.1 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 3.2% (Industry Data).

Read the full press release here.

Additional details can be found on Exo’s podcast episode. “Welcome to The Exo Chamber!” available on Apple Podcasts here.