Dental care is essential, but many patients lack confidence that their dentist can provide an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment. Some dentists overtreat patients, incurring unnecessary expenses, while others miss serious issues that could develop into more serious, costly problems in the future.
Seeking a second opinion from another dentist can help patients feel more confident in their treatment plan, but time constraints and additional costs make this option not always practical.
Dentists are well aware of this problem, which is why dental offices are increasingly buying AI-powered software that uses computer vision to identify dental disease in x-rays.
Pearl, one of just three FDA-cleared startups to use AI to help dentists make accurate diagnoses and provide “second opinions” to patients, announced Wednesday that it had raised $58 million in a Series B round led by Left Lane Capital, with participation from Smash Capital, Alpha Partners, and existing investors Craft Ventures and Neotribe Ventures.
The company’s founder and CEO, Ophir Tanz, grew Pearl out of GumGum, a computer-vision startup serving sports and advertising franchises that he co-founded in 2007. GumGum was looking to expand its machine-learning capabilities into healthcare, and Tanz, whose father was a dentist, quickly saw the space as one that could benefit from AI-powered diagnostics. (Pearl spun out of GumGum in 2019.)
Tanz said AI could standardize how dentists interpret X-ray images, and there are much larger data sets of dental images available to train AI models than for other parts of the body.
Pearl claims that dentists who use the startup’s diagnostic software see an average of 30% more patients agreeing to recommended treatment. Tanz explained that while Pearl helps patients visualize dental problems more clearly than traditional X-rays, the tool isn’t intended to replace a dentist’s judgment.
“We highlight areas of concern and provide recommendations, but it is up to the physician to clinically examine and make the final decision,” he said.
Pearl’s revenue is expected to grow 458% through 2023, and Tanz expects the company to continue growing rapidly going forward.
“We previously believed this would be the absolute standard of care globally in five years,” he said. “Now we think it’s three years. We’re seeing large-scale adoption around the world right now.”
Pearl competes with two other FDA-cleared startups with similar features, Video Health and Overject, which raised $53 million in Series C funding in March at a valuation of $550 million.
