Venture capital funding for medical imaging AI companies since 2015

2nd June 2023 – Contribution by Sanjay Parekh and Ellie Baker – Featured in Circle Square Digital Health Trends – May 2023

Executive summary

Independent software vendors (ISVs) developing AI image analysis solutions for medical imaging have raised almost $5 billion in venture capital (VC) funding since 2015. There are over 200 ISVs, most of which are startups, but some have started to mature, with the top 25 companies accounting for 73% of the total VC funding raised ($3.6 billion).

The number of deals appears to have peaked in 2022 (at 95); although the number of deals per year is declining, the appetite of investors has not abated. There has been a shift in funding, from many smaller early stage funding deals to fewer, but larger later stage funding deals Companies from the US have received the most funding (almost $2 billion), almost double the funding received by companies from China ($1.1 billion). Companies from Israel ($513 million), the UK ($310 million) and South Korea ($255 million) make up the top five of countries with the most funding.

HeartFlow remains the most well funded vendor, having raised over $650 million since 2015. Three other companies that have raised over $250 million in VC funding (Shukun Technology, Cleerly, Viz.ai). Infervision is also assumed to have surpassed this mark, but its Series C funding round remains undisclosed.

There are a further 8 companies that have also raised more than $100 million, a marker deemed by Signify Research to be indicative of potential long term success. These include companies from Israel (Aidoc, CathWorks), China (Keya Medical, Deepwise Shenrui), and one each from the US (Imagen Technologies), the UK (Perspectum), South Korea (Lunit), and Australia (Annalise).

Editorial: Sanjay M Parekh, PhD and Ellie Baker, Signify Research, release this free summary report ahead of its comprehensive market an analysis: AI in Medical Imaging World Market Analysis 2023 (June 2023). The full report to be released in June 2023 collects and analyzes the almost $5 billion invested since 2015 in medical imaging AI.

Source: Signify Research