Seed31 July 2020

Novoic raises £2m in seed funding led by Anthemis Exponential Ventures to advance clinical programmes

Anthemis Exponential Ventures led the seed round with participation from APEX Ventures and Entrepreneur First.

£2.0MSeed

Novoic is a digital biotechnology company developing speech-based artificial intelligence algorithms to detect and monitor neurological conditions. The firm focuses on creating software as a medical device for early diagnosis.

Novoic has secured £2m in seed funding to expand its research team and advance clinical programmes for neurological conditions including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Anthemis Exponential Ventures led the round, with participation from APEX Ventures, Entrepreneur First, and Plug and Play Ventures, alongside angel backing from Stanford Angels.

The oversubscribed funding will allow the biotechnology company to scale up its artificial intelligence research and engineering teams. Novoic aims to build clinically viable software as a medical device products by analysing audio linguistic speech patterns.

From the founder

"Decades of academic research has linked speech changes and many neurological conditions. However, we are yet to see clinically viable products that have been developed as a result of this work. There’s been a number of barriers to clinical development that existing techniques fundamentally have not been built to solve and cannot solve. In the last 2-3 years the research field of applying AI to analyse audio and natural language has transformed beyond recognition. We believe that the time is now to leverage new AI-technology to create long-lasting solutions for patients all over the world,"

Emil Fristed

co-founder and CEO at Novoic

Investor perspective

"The current pandemic vividly shows the need for digital, non-invasive technologies for clinical diagnosis and monitoring. Clinical trials are on hold, with regulators advising on the use of novel remote endpoints to salvage the trials. At the same time, the shift towards telemedicine models is further accelerating the adoption of digital technologies in the health care sectors. Novoic–with its next generation algorithms and strong focus on clinical validation–is best positioned to drive this acceleration."

Vica Manos

Anthemis Exponential Ventures