(Bloomberg) -- Pearl Inc., a Los Angeles-based dental startup, has raised new financing valuing the company at $400 million.
The startup raised $58 million in a round led by Left Lane Capital, with participation from Smash Capital, Craft Ventures and others.
Pearl uses machine learning to improve the precision and speed of diagnostics for dental health. Founded in 2019, the company touts a US Food and Drug Administration-approved AI technology that can read X-rays and diagnose issues in real-time, and says it has received regulatory clearance in 120 countries for its technology.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ophir Tanz said he built Pearl to address “the epidemic of underdiagnosis.” He sees it as an “inevitability across all of medicine that AI will be used.”
David Sacks, co-founder and partner at Craft Ventures, said he believes Pearl’s technology will become an industry standard. “Pearl’s radiologic AI offering will be the basic infrastructure for a majority of dental offices worldwide,” Sacks said. He previously invested in GumGum, another startup co-founded by Tanz.
Vinny Pujji, managing partner at Left Lane Capital, said a practice can double or triple its revenue per dentist by using Pearl’s technology — one reason he invested. The startup also can help patients “understand what might be going on with those X-rays that are impossible to read as a lay person,” he said.
Going forward, Tanz said the public markets are the goal for the company. “We’ve had numerous acquisition offers,” he said, adding, “I’m not interested in selling. We’re on an IPO path.”
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