“Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily”, May 15 (Reporter Li Mingming) Recently, AI medical imaging company Subtle Medical Inc. (Subtle Medical Inc.) (hereinafter referred to as “Deep Intelligence”) announced the completion of the B+ round of financing of nearly 10 million dollars. Investors include past investment institutions such as Fusion Fund, a well-known investment institution in Silicon Valley focusing on Shenzhen technology. It has also introduced new dollar funds rooted in Silicon Valley, ENVISIONX Capital (ENVISIONX Capital), Bluerun Ventures, Shanghai Wenzhou Investment, and other strategic partners in the Asia-Pacific region.

Regarding future financing plans, Gong Enhao, co-founder and CEO of Shenzhen Zhi Tou Medical, told the “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” reporter that preparations are currently being made for the next round of financing. Larger financing is expected to be completed within this year, further accelerating global commercial expansion while achieving initial balance of payments.

The “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” reporter noticed that Gong Enhao is a serial entrepreneur and has rich experience in the field of AI image applications.

AI medical imaging companies urgently need to make a profit

ShenZhi Medical was one of the first companies to apply generative AI to the medical field. It has developed AI products with a full modality of medical imaging around AI technology and generative models to accelerate medical imaging tests such as MRI and PET.

According to the company, the company has several product lines under development. The overseas image quality control AI product SubtleFormat (domestic product name SupreFormat) was recently approved by the US FDA, and AI clinical implementation has officially begun.

According to the reporter's information, the company's team is mainly located in Silicon Valley and Shanghai. Among them, the Silicon Valley company was established at the end of 2017, and the Shanghai company was established in 2021.

Due to the imaging gap caused by factors such as aging and insufficient medical resources, doctors are under great pressure. The policy supports the implementation of domestically produced medical imaging equipment and AI products. Currently, about 70 AI medical imaging products have obtained three types of certificates, namely medical device registration certificates, medical device production licenses, and medical device business licenses.

An investor in the medical sector told the “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” reporter that over the past ten years, more than 100 billion dollars have been injected into the medical artificial intelligence circuit, mainly in segments such as medical imaging, drug research and development, and robotics. Today, medical artificial intelligence, starting with AI medical imaging, has entered a state of change, the variety of products has increased, and there is also a situation where companies can obtain licenses and go public. Whether an enterprise's R&D investment can be recovered and profitable within a limited period of time has become its core issue.

“Among the thousands of companies currently existing in the market, few participants can recover costs while maintaining high-intensity R&D. Only in recent years have some leading companies achieved large-scale revenue and are expected to generate profits. Therefore, AI medical imaging companies should rely on an ecological route to speed up their own hematopoiesis and enhance their ability to commercialize.”

According to Gong Eun-ho, the company has now overcome the commercial question of who pays for “medical imaging AI,” implemented various commercial paths for B-side payments, and formed a large-scale device-side, pharmacist, and hospital payment model. “The company has doubled its business volume for three consecutive years, and its global business revenue is expected to exceed 100 million during the year.

According to incomplete statistics from the “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” reporter, the current major players in the field of AI medical imaging in China also include: Yizhun Intelligence, Shenrui Healthcare, Baishi Healthcare, Shanghai Lianying Intelligence, and Shukun Technology.

Currently, the main ecological routes of AI medical imaging companies include building an ecological route for surgical robots and artificial intelligence medical imaging, building an ecological route for medical informatization and artificial intelligence medical imaging, building an ecological route for integrated diagnosis and treatment plus artificial intelligence medical imaging, and building an ecological route for artificial intelligence medical imaging overseas.

Dr. Stanford is a serial entrepreneur

The “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” reporter learned from people familiar with the matter that Gong Enhao is a serial entrepreneur and currently an industry expert at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Medical Imaging Center (AIMI). While attending Stanford University in 2014, he co-founded the professional retouching software Polarr (Spicy Retouching).

Meanwhile, techniques related to deep knowledge medicine were extended from 2012 to 2017, when he was studying at the Stanford Department of Electronic Engineering. Since 2014 and 2015, Gong Eun-ho has been exploring the application of AI in medical imaging with Zaharchuk, another co-founder of the company, who is also a Stanford radiologist and an academician of the American Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

At the end of 2017, the two co-founded Subtle Medical and chose the AI quality and process optimization circuit to accelerate the commercialization of related cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology.

According to Gong Enhao, the company's R&D team currently has more than 50 people. They are doctorates and postdocs from top universities such as Stanford, UCSF, UCSD, MIT, CMU, Tsinghua, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and has published hundreds of papers in the field of artificial intelligence in medical imaging. R&D personnel account for about 50%. Most R&D personnel come from relevant cutting-edge fields, including the Department of Electronic Engineering, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Department of Computational Biology, and the Department of Biomedical Imaging.

Regarding industry opportunities, he believes that in today's society, whether in response to the epidemic, social aging, or in terms of personalized clinical diagnosis and preventive health examinations, demand for medical imaging is constantly increasing, and fields such as nuclear medicine, nuclear medicine, and integrated imaging diagnosis and treatment have continued to grow by more than 10%. Furthermore, the recent financial interest rate loan policy has also accelerated the implementation of various imaging solutions.

Zheng Hong, the founding managing partner of EnvisionX Capital (EnvisionX Capital), one of the investors, told the “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” reporter that the choice to invest in Shenzhen Zhi Zhi was based on the company's technological innovation, market leadership and sustainability of the business model, as well as consistency with the fund's long-term investment strategy.

Jiajia Capital is an emerging dollar fund. In terms of investment strategy, it values three AI Native application industries: healthcare, financial services, and gaming. According to Zheng Hong, future trends of Jiajia Capital in the medical industry will focus on segments such as strengthening investment in medical data infrastructure and expanding telemedicine and digital health solutions.

Currently, Jiajia Capital has completed the first round. It manages a total of nearly 1 billion US dollars of funds. The main investors include a number of entrepreneurs and family offices.