Japan’s health-tech Ubie needs to gas its U.S growth with $19M Collection C extension • robotechcompany.com
Ubie, a Tokyo-based startup offering an AI-powered symptom checker app and hospital SaaS merchandise, has closed a $19 million extension to its earlier Collection C spherical. This brings the well being tech startup’s whole funding to $45.2 million in Collection C.
The extension spherical consists of 90% fairness and 10% debt financing, in accordance with the co-founder and CEO of Ubie Kota Kuto. With this spherical, Ubie has raised a complete of $76 million since its inception in 2017.
The startup declined to touch upon its firm valuation, however a supply aware of the state of affairs, who wished to stay nameless, instructed robotechcompany.com its valuation is now estimated at $250 million. Traders within the newest funding embody Sogo Medical, AAIC Funding, Japan Affect Funding, Rakuten Capital, Shoko Chukin Financial institution, Japan Finance Company and Mizuho Financial institution.
Ubie plans to make use of the proceeds to scale up its healthcare platform and ramp up its penetration into the U.S. after coming into Singapore in August. The startup launched its symptom checker app earlier this 12 months within the U.S. and opened a U.S. subsidiary in October. Kuto instructed robotechcompany.com that Singapore’s medical system is much like Japan’s, given its geographical and cultural background, so the corporate determined Singapore could be “an acceptable first step for world growth.”
The outlet is in discussions with pharma firms to extend partnerships, a lot of which have workplaces on the East Coast, Kuto defined. It expects to finalize and announce a handful of partnership offers early subsequent 12 months, Kuto added.
Ubie isn’t the one well being tech firm creating an AI-enabled symptom checker for customers. A Boston-based startup, Buoy Well being, constructed a symptom verify app utilizing AI; Berline-based Ada Well being additionally developed an AI-driven symptom evaluation app; and IBM’s Mediktor helps individuals with symptom evaluation. Kuto identified, as a differentiator, that Ubie affords a B2B product referred to as Ubie for Hospital, often known as AI Monshin, and a B2C app for particular person customers. The Ubie for hospitals, permitting docs to scale back their time for taking notes of sufferers’ histories, is a medical questionnaire software program for sufferers to have a preliminary interview through a pill whereas ready earlier than assembly docs.
“Based mostly on knowledge extracted from about 50,000 medical analysis papers [created by more than 50 physicisans], AI Monshin [automatically] selects and asks round 20 questions from 3,500 sorts of query knowledge,” Kota mentioned.
Co-founded by medical physician Yoshinori Abe and engineer Kubo, Ubie claims that greater than 1,100 medical establishments in Japan use Ubie’s AI Monshin. The corporate additionally has greater than 7 million month-to-month lively customers (MAUs) of its symptom checker app. Ubie employs roughly 200 individuals.
