Altoida raises further $14 million to “democratize digital cognitive assessment at scale” via augmented reality (AR) and AI

Altoi­da snags Mer­ck KGaA-led $14M fund­ing round for Alzheimer’s diag­nos­tic app (Fierce Biotech):

The $14 mil­lion top-up came from a mix of old and new investors, co-led by White­cap Ven­ture Part­ners and Mer­ck KGaA’s cor­po­rate VC arm, M Ven­tures, which also led the ini­tial tranche of series A financ­ing … The new­ly upsized fund­ing will help Altoi­da add to its work­force, pay for intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ings and con­tin­ue devel­op­ing its tech plat­form to assess neu­ro­log­i­cal function.

Through an app down­loaded to a patient’s own smart­phone or tablet, Altoida’s tech first offers up a 10-minute test. A vari­ety of Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR)-powered exer­cis­es mea­sure 11 areas of the brain that have been linked to Alzheimer’s. The video-game-like activ­i­ties ask users to hide and relo­cate vir­tu­al objects around the room, sim­u­late a fire evac­u­a­tion and search for vir­tu­al items while a sound con­tin­u­ous­ly plays.

From there, Altoida’s AI ana­lyzes the patient’s per­for­mance through­out the test. The result­ing report high­lights symp­toms of cog­ni­tive decline—such as hand and gait errors, eye track­ing, pupil dila­tion and more—and pro­vides a score of the like­li­hood that they’ll devel­op Alzheimer’s with­in the next year.

The Announcement:

Altoi­da upsizes its Series A Round to $20.3M to Advance Its First in Class AI-Pow­ered Neu­rocog­ni­tive Assess­ment Plat­form (press release):

Altoi­da, Inc., the pre­ci­sion neu­rol­o­gy com­pa­ny pio­neer­ing non-inva­sive brain health mea­sure­ment and neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­ease diag­nos­tics with AI and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR), today announced that it has suc­cess­ful­ly raised an addi­tion­al $14 mil­lion for its Series A round … bring­ing the total Series A funds raised to $20.3 million.

Altoida’s mis­sion is to set a new gold stan­dard in brain health. The company’s pre­ci­sion neu­rol­o­gy plat­form is designed to accel­er­ate and improve drug devel­op­ment, research, and care for peo­ple with neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases, like Alzheimer’s, using data cap­tured with a stan­dard smart­phone or tablet … The plat­form has received FDA Break­through Device Designation.

“Altoi­da is pio­neer­ing a new cat­e­go­ry of pre­ci­sion neu­rol­o­gy, and we’re thrilled to co-lead this round,” said Shayn Dia­mond, Part­ner at White­cap Ven­ture Part­ners. “The com­bi­na­tion of aug­ment­ed real­i­ty and AI has the poten­tial to improve stan­dard of care and democ­ra­tize dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive assess­ment at scale, and Altoida’s plat­form and team are at the cut­ting-edge of these two technologies.”

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