Most AI imaging startups build one model per disease. A Cambridge company has raised $20m to build a single model for the whole chest. Then it can spin the rest out of that.
Qureight makes AI imaging tools for lung and heart clinical trials. It closed a $20m Series B led by Molten Ventures, the company said. The round takes its total funding past €27m, Tech.eu reported.
A foundation model for the chest #
The money builds an AI imaging lab around a general-purpose 3D model of the chest. From that base, Qureight says, it can build a disease-specific model in one or two months. From scratch, that takes about a year. It plans new models for asthma, lung cancer, pulmonary hypertension and bronchiectasis, on top of its existing lung-fibrosis work.
Its pitch to drugmakers centres on speed. One Qureight tool cuts imaging decisions in a trial from about two weeks to 48 hours. Another builds 3D maps of airways and blood vessels to track how a drug changes a disease. It even offers “synthetic control arms,” AI stand-ins for a real control group that can trim a trial’s cost.
AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb already use it, Tech Funding News reported. The market it is chasing, lung and heart trials, is forecast to reach $27.5bn by 2030.
Two doctors and a CT scan #
The origin story is unusual for an AI imaging firm. Two doctors, not engineers, founded Qureight in 2018. Chief executive Muhunthan Thillai is a chest physician who still sees patients, and he started it after a CT scan he could not confidently read.
To cover the gap, the founders hired a senior technical bench. It includes a former global platform head at HP and a machine-learning professor from Imperial College London. Its closest European rival, Oxford’s Brainomix, sells diagnostic software to hospitals. Qureight sits earlier, inside the trial itself.
Keeping it in London #
The raise says something about where AI-in-medicine money now flows. Qureight approached Molten two years ago, and Molten said no. This time three investors sent term sheets in six weeks. It turned down US offers to keep the round with a London fund.
This is the same rush of capital chasing AI for drug discovery and AI biology. A run of health-tech raises sits alongside it. Qureight plans to double its staff to 100 by December. Whether its chest model becomes a trial standard or stays a niche tool depends on the partnerships it lands next.
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