Radiology AI firm Mediaire raises nearly $12.7M in financing

Mediaire, a German radiology artificial intelligence startup specializing in solutions for MRI reporting, has raised nearly $12.7 million (USD) in new funding, leaders announced Tuesday. 

Private equity firm LBO France led the investment round with participation from IBB Ventures in Berlin and the Swiss family office Wille Finance. Founded in 2018, Mediaire offers the MD Suite of AI solutions, assisting radiologists with interpreting MR images of the brain, prostate and knees. 

"We are seeing the impact on thousands of radiologists every day in hundreds of hospitals and radiology practices across Europe that are utilizing our AI solutions,” physicist Andreas Lemke, Phd, CEO and co-founder of Mediaire, said in a Nov. 12 announcement. “With this investment, we will be able to scale these benefits to even more healthcare providers."

The oversubscribed financing round also included participation from existing investors HTGF (High-Tech Gründerfonds) of Germany, Italy’s LIFTT venture capital firm, and Gateway Ventures. 

Mediaire said it is focused on the seamless integration of AI into clinical workflows, aiming to enhance radiologist efficiency and diagnostic accuracy. Its solutions include MDbrain, MDprostate and MDknee, providing automated decision support to improve the quality of diagnosis while optimizing workflow efficiency. 

Gateway Ventures, which also is based in Germany, offered insight into Mediaire’s business model in a separate writeup. The AI firm reportedly had seen its monthly recurring revenue triple since the first quarter of 2023, with Mediaire able to cover 24% of all MRIs via its solutions. Fifty radiologists were customers and investors in the company at the time of the posting, and the Mediaire also sees potential to use its product as a platform to offer third-party AI solutions. 

Today’s radiologist is facing the dilemma of a skyrocketing number of images and a lack of time and staffing to meet demand. This has triggered a chain of negative consequences, with increased time pressure, decreasing pay, high burnout, and a 30% error rate, Gateway noted. Its solutions operate using a software as a service model with volume-based pricing starting at about $10.55 (USD) per report, decreasing to about $1 apiece. Gateway Ventures estimated that the MRI radiology market in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France and the U.S. alone was worth about $44.4 billion at the time. 

“With its AI solutions in this space, there is a [$3.2 billion] yearly market opportunity for Mediaire with a potential to increase this to [$5.3 billion] worldwide,” Gateway Ventures noted. 

Mediaire attributed its early success to partnerships with university hospitals, industry leaders such as Bayer/Calantic, Sectra, Deepc and European radiology chains including Med360, Evidia, Starvision, and RIMED/UNILABS. Its solutions are CE-marked in Europe and not currently available in the U.S. 

“We at HTGF have been very pleased with Mediaire’s development over the past years and believe the team has demonstrated the value it can add to its customers, the radiologists,” Angelika Vlachou, PhD, partner at HTGF said in a separate announcement. “The field of AI-based tools is advancing rapidly, and to be successful, companies need to demonstrate true product innovation that is precisely tailored to customer needs. We are excited to continue to support Mediaire’s development.”