Overjet sinks its teeth into another round of capital for its dental AI tech

Just four months after announcing $27 million in Series A funding, Overjet, a company developing dental artificial intelligence software, came forward again with another $42.5 million in Series B financing backed by existing investors.

Prior to the company’s Series A, we profiled them in 2020 when the company raised $7.85 million in funding. The latest funding was led by General Catalyst and Insight Partners and included Crosslink Capital and E14 Fund. Overall, the company has raised just under $80 million in total. Now even more well capitalized, Overjet’s valuation has nearly quadrupled to $425 million, says Wardah Inam, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Overjet.

“We were valued at $115 million at the last round, so this is a substantial increase,” she added. “For a dental company, not many have reached that milestone yet.”

Having just completed a round of funding, Inam told TechCrunch that it was a quick Series B, and though the timing was unexpected, it was the result of much inbound inquiries from investors. New investors showed interest, but the company decided to do the round internally when it was able to get the terms it wanted for the future, she said.

Boston-based Overjet’s dental AI software supports dentists in understanding what the scans show with regard to disease identification and progression. Its Dental Assist product has FDA clearance and its strategy of targeting dental groups with large numbers of providers, for example its partnership with 50-clinic New England Family Dentistry, announced in October, is keeping the company busy working to implement its software into thousands of practices, Inam said.

On the insurance side, the company counts 16 major carriers as customers. It was covering 50 million members at the time of the Series A, and that figure is now around 75 million, Inam said.

“The raise was to set up practice operations, and now that we have good hires in, we have a huge backlog of practices that we want to launch,” she added. “Milestones that we were planning to hit in a year, we ended up hitting in a few months.”

In December, Overjet reached 50 employees after starting the year with 20, and Inam expects to triple that headcount in the next six months in the areas of customer success and engineering. It switched to remote-first operations so it could reach a broader range of talent. The company also plans to use the new funding to develop new products.

Next up, the company remains on course with its focus on improving oral health and oral care and building technology. Inam believes that “for the first time ever” the technology is there to analyze dental data through computers and be able to more accurately see the progression of disease and measure outcomes toward more value-based care.

Meanwhile, the dental industry is one that has been slow to embrace technology, but many startups have emerged in the past decade to assist payers and providers in automating some of the traditionally manual parts of the business, particularly the clear aligner space and analyzing dental scans, and educating people about dental health.

This year, companies like Adra, which is turning X-rays into images for better identification of problems, also received funding, as did dental insurer Beam Dental.

“Dental practices are fast being run more like businesses and they are ready to pay for technology and other tools to help them improve care and revenue,” Inam said. “That’s why more and more good startups are being formed in this space, because everyone underestimates the value of oral health, but now there is an opportunity to really provide greater technology.”

LightForce Orthodontics wolfs down $50M to straighten out that crooked smile of yours

Everyone’s set of teeth are different enough that orthodontics has traditionally been part artistry, part medical witchcraft. In the late 1990s, Invisalign changed the industry with customizable aligners, but it turns out that aligners only serve 30% of orthodontics patients. For the rest, there hasn’t been much in the way of innovation — until LightForce came along and shook things up. With the snappy slogan “one size fits one”, LightForce Orthodontics creates custom, 3D-printed brackets and placement trays for braces. In this case, more custom means better: Patients enjoy shorter treatment times, and orthodontists are able to offer tooth movement treatment plans with incredible precision — down to a thousandth of a millimeter.

LightForce Orthodontics has seen stratospheric growth over the past year — 500% revenue growth, while the team grew by 300%. Investors paid attention, and one investor, in particular, wanted to get its fangs into the company and place itself on the cap table. Kleiner Perkins cut its teeth in the business of orthodontics 25 years ago, making a boatload of money from its investment in Invisalign. They are back for another bite of the apple, leading the $50 million Series C round into LightForce, with participation from the company’s past investors, including Matrix Partners, Tyche Partners and AM Ventures.

“One thing we talk about all the time here at this company is that we put patients first in every decision we make. Everything we do always goes to the lens of ‘is it the best thing for the patient’. Even our all-hands start with a patient: how did we help somebody? The market we are really unlocking is the teen and adolescent market, which represents 75% of all cases in the U.S. Think about adolescent psychology: that’s when kids are forming their sense of self,” explains CEO and co-founder of LightForce, Dr. Alfred Griffin III, DMD, PhD, MMSc, who still practices as an orthodontist four days per month. “I can’t tell you how many cases I’ve seen personally as an orthodontist, where mom will come in and say ‘my son gets teased’ for this or for that. With LightForce, we can help that patient faster and reduce the number of appointments and reduce the amount of time they have to be out of school. We get them to a better result by leveraging technology.”

The company previously raised a $14 million Series B round just over a year ago, and wasn’t in the market for more money just yet, but when Kleiner Perkins came knocking, LightForce decided to take the call and see if there was a deal to be made.

LightForce’s custom bracket (left) can be placed and aligned with sub-millimeter precision, in addition to being the right shape for the tooth. A traditional bracket is shown on the right. Image Credits: LightForce Orthodontics

“We raised a little bit earlier than we had planned. There were some very well-known VCs that were keeping tabs on us that had seen us in the past, but we were a bit too early for them. Kleiner Perkins was always one that was on my mind, as one that I would love to work with — especially with Wen Hsieh himself. He has a deep background in 3D printing and hard tech. He’s done a lot of the best hard-tech deals,” explains Griffin. “Kleiner Perkins is one of the only venture capital groups that has done anything significant in orthodontics. It was 20 years ago, but Align Technology changed orthodontics, for the better in my opinion. Two value props came out of Align Technology. One was the aesthetic benefits, which unlocked the adult segment. The second thing is the digital nature of what they do.”

“A lot of these innovations come from people who are not from the industry,” says Wen Hsieh, the partner at Kleiner Perkins who led the investment. “Alfred is an orthodontist himself, and it has made a world of difference. Because he’s a doctor himself, he already knows where to insert into their workflow. What part of their normal workflow is eliminated, what part is enhanced, how they can spend more or less time, how it impacts the dental tech, how it impacts the footprint of the office, how it impacts how often the patient has to come in, and so on. Meanwhile, Alfred is taking in the knowledge from other areas, such as from simulation and from 3D printing.”

If you’re sitting here scratching your head about why people can’t just use Invisalign and be done with it… I had a very similar question. It turns out that aligners can only push, not pull. Pulling teeth down to align with other teeth is something braces are great for, but aligners aren’t able to accomplish. The other aspect is compliance: Aligners have to be worn 22 hours per day, and, well, people just aren’t very good at that. As Griffin points out: “Mom isn’t going to get mad at their teenager if the treatment is going too slowly. They’ll both blame the orthodontist.”

The LightForce brackets are 3D-printed, and so are the trays they come in. This enables orthodontists to place the brackets exactly where they need to go on the teeth. The new brackets are semi-translucent, which means they appear to be the same color as the teeth, leaving them much less visible. Image Credits: LightForce Orthodontics

This investment is good news for teeth-havers, but it’s also great news for 3D printing fans. Orthodontics is one of the world’s biggest commercial users of 3D printing technology — Invisalign is currently the world’s biggest 3D printing company — and that trend isn’t going to change as LightForce now has the bank balance to go and buy a godawful number of printers themselves.

With the $50 million cash-injection into the company’s war chest, the battle for the braces can commence in earnest. The new funds will help scale LightForce operations and go-to-market efforts to enable more orthodontic practices around the country to combine the digital benefits seen with aligner therapy with the tooth-moving efficiency and quality outcomes seen with braces. It’s going to be an exciting, but complex journey: Scaling an operation where every set of hybrid ceramic braces is custom-printed for each client is fantastically challenging both logistically and operationally. 

“Scaling, mass customization is a very unique problem that most talk about in theory, but very few have dealt with in practicality,” admits Griffin. “There’s around 200 of us in the company right now, and we will probably double that over the next year. Sales and engineering are probably going to be the biggest expenses, but in terms of headcount, we will need to grow the most in manufacturing technicians, both in terms of physical and digital manufacturing.”

Toothfairy’s virtual dentist app raises £3M Seed round led by ADA Ventures and Slingshot

Platforms for dentists are booming right now as many governments gradually make it harder to access dentistry via social care, especially in the UK. But the most lucrative market is cosmetic dentistry and this is where startups are often playing, such as aggregating private clinics under a simple booking platform.

Toothfairy is a UK startup that has a variation on this approach. It’s now raised a £3million seed funding round led by impact VC ADA Ventures and Slingshot, with participation from Seedcamp, All Iron, Haatch Ventures, as well as angels from the Atomico Angel Programme, and Angel Investor of the Year Deepali and ex-(Transfer)Wise Joe Cross. Current investors already include co-founders of Funding Circle James Meeking and Andrew Mullinger, as well as an angel syndicate from the USA.

The company says 19 million dental appointments were missed due to Covid-19 and over 54% of the population does not know how to access dental care out of hours, so a tech approach can help alleviate this problem.

Toothfairy headlines

Toothfairy headlines



Toothfairy connects patients to dentists on-demand via video, with the app being officially approved by the NHS.

Patients can track their treatment, speak to a dentist and update their medical notes all remotely.

They can also go to a clinic for a 3D Scan. This scan is then used to create teeth aligners, which then get sent to customers. The startup also offers emergency appointments and teeth whitening sessions on its app.

Co-founders Dr. Deepak Aulak and Dr. Kian Dhinsa graduated together From King’s College London and have won some dentistry awards for their app.

Y Combinator-backed Adra wants to turn all dentists into cavity-finding ‘super dentists’

Like other areas of healthcare, the dental industry is steadily embracing technology. But while much of it is in the orthodontic realm, other startups, like Adra, are bringing artificial intelligence into a dentist’s day-to-day workflow, particularly in finding cavities, of what will be a $435.08 billion global dental services market this year.

The Singapore-based company was founded in 2021, but was an idea that started last year. Co-founder Hamed Fesharaki has been a dentist for over a decade and owns two clinics in Singapore.

He said dentists learn to read X-rays in dental school, but it can take a few years to get good at it. Dentists also often have just minutes to read them as they hop between patients.

As a result, dentists end up misdiagnosing cavities up to 40% of the time, co-founder Yasaman Nemat said. Her background is in imaging, where she developed an artificial intelligence machine identifying hard-to-see cancers, something Fesharaki thought could also be applied to dental medicine.

Providing the perspective of a more experienced dentist, Adra’s intent is to make every dentist “a super dentist,” Fesharaki told TechCrunch. Its software detects cavities and other dental problems on dental X-rays faster and 25% more accurately, so that clinics can use that time to better serve patients and increase revenue.

Example of Adra’s software. Image Credits: Adra

“We are coming from the eye of an experienced dentist to help illustrate the problems by turning the X-rays into images to better understand what to look for,” he added. “Ultimately, the dentist has the final say, but we bring the experience element to help them compare and give them suggestions.”

By quickly pointing out the problem and the extent of it, dentists can decide in what way they want to treat it — for example, do a filling, a fluoride treatment or wait.

Along with third co-founder Shifeng Chen, the company is finishing up its time in Y Combinator’s summer cohort and has raised $250,000 so far. Fesharaki intends to do more formalized seed fundraising and wants to bring on more engineers to tackle user experience and add more features.

The company has a few clinics doing pilots and wants to attract more as it moves toward a U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance. Fesharaki expects it to take six to nine months to receive the clearance, and then Adra will be able to hit the market in late 2022 or early 2023.

Direct-to-consumer orthodontic startup Impress raises $50M to scale across Europe

As the famous phrase goes, ‘software is eating the world’ and now software is eating dentistry. Or, perhaps more accurately, the arena of orthodontics — the specialty of dentistry that deals with things like braces — is slowly but surely being digitalized.

To whit, Impress, a Southern European player in direct-to-consumer orthodontics, has raised a $50 million Series A funding round led by CareCapital (a dental division of Hillhouse Capital in Asia), along with Nickleby capital, UNIQA Ventures, and investors including Michael Linse, Valentin Pitarque, Peter Schiff, Elliot Dornbusch, and others. All existing shareholders, such as TA Ventures and Bynd VC, also participated. 

Impress is an homage to the direct-to-consumer startups in this area in the US such as SmileDirect and now plans to scale across Europe from its existing bases in Spain, Italy, Portugal, UK, and France.

The company was founded in 2019 in Barcelona by orthodontist Dr. Khaled Kasem and serial entrepreneurs Diliara and Vladimir Lupenko.

Speaking from Barcelona, Lupenko told me that the idea was to “combine the best orthodontic tradition with the most innovative technology in the sector.”

As things stand, most of the time, consumers can usually only access cosmetic teeth alignment treatments or orthodontic medical treatments in conventional clinics. The new wave of clinics employs 3D scans and panoramic X-rays to check nerve and bone health.

Impress’s model is to offer these high-quality medical treatments directly to consumers, by developing its own chain of orthodontic clinics, which also put an emphasis on design and a ‘modern’ patient experience, it says.

As Diliara Lupenko says: “We didn’t copy what other companies in the space were doing and approached the market from a different angle from the get-go. We doubled down on the doctor-led digital model which brought us way better conversion rates and treatment quality even though on paper it looked complex in the beginning. It’s still very complex but we were able to crack it and scale exponentially.”

Impress now has 75 clinics in Spain, Italy, the UK, France, and Portugal which optimize costs and automate key parts of the value chain.

It now says it’s approaching €50m in annual run-rate and is projected to grow to €150m of revenue in 12 months. 

Andreas Nemeth, managing partner of UNIQA Ventures GmbH commented: “Impress’s customer-centric focus, as well as its demonstrated ability to blitzscale, attracted us to the business. Vladimir and his team leverage technology to create a seamless customer journey for invisible orthodontics and optimized their cost structure in a unique way using software.”

Oral-B’s iO smart toothbrush is a big upgrade in just about every way

It can be easy to mock the very concept of a ‘smart toothbrush’ – what other device in our lives do we use daily that seems least in need of a connected upgrade? But Oral-B has been upgrading its powered toothbrush lineup with Bluetooth and app-based intelligence for quite a while now, and its latest new smart brush, the iO Series, is actually a very clever and capable update that should help you keep your teeth better-brushed and in healthier shape.

The basics

Oral-B’s iO is a fundamental rethinking of its powered toothbrush lineup in a way that none of its prior new models has been; the design, feature set, application and more are all brand new. The new look, designed in partnership with Braun, is a vast improvement (more about that below), and there’s a color display that provides more info and visual feedback than on any previous Oral-B smart brush. The induction charger is also new, with magnetic support to keep it in place, and there’s a new companion app that provides a lot more in the way of guidance, with improvements that accrue over time as the software gets to know you.

The iO Series includes different accessories and equipment depending on which version you get – Oral-B provided the Series 8, which includes the toothbrush, a charger, two replacement heads and a carrying case. The different Series’ also include different features – the Series 7 is the most affordable, but lacks the Sensitive+ brushing mode on the Series 8, while the top-end Series 9 is the only one that includes a dedicated tongue brushing mode.

Using the toothbrush is easy. You can use one of two buttons on the brush itself to cycle through its various modes, and then press the other to turn it on and off. An integrated LED ring provides visual feedback about when you’re applying the right amount of pressure, and when you use too much, and vibration feedback indicates when you hit 30-second marks, and when you’ve completed the full dentist-recommended two minutes of brushing.

With the iOS or Android app, you can connect your iO via Bluetooth for more advanced feedback and control, including a guided brushing mode that shows you where you’ve cleaned, and for how long, with a simple graphic representation of your teeth.

Image Credits: Darrell Etherington

Design and features

The new industrial design of the iO is a vast improvement over the previous Oral-B smart toothbrushes in every way. They’re sleeker, with redesigned interchangeable brush heads that not only have a better mechanical connection to the base, but that also flow into the body with a smooth swooping connection point. The black version I reviewed has a matte, slightly textured finish that feels and grips great, and the built-in display is bright and full-color for an easy understanding of which mode you’re in, as well as the status of your battery charge and a quick report card of sorts about the quality of your last brush via smiley face feedback.

Visual and force feedback both work great on this model, with an easily visible LED ring showing green when you’re using just the right amount of pressure, and turning quickly to red when you press too hard. As a serial excess pressure brusher, this worked very well in modulating my bad habit, and I was very quickly able to get into a rhythm of correctly-applied pressure instead.

The new charger design lacks the peg that was present on Oral-B’s previous rechargeable toothbrushes, and instead relies on a magnetic connection akin to the one Apple uses on its Apple Watch charger. This tends to make it a bit more likely to get knocked off the charger by wayward reaches, I’ve found, but it also makes both the brush and charger easier to keep clean, and the charger takes up less counter space. The LCD screen will show you charge level when placed on the charger while it’s plugged in.

Image Credits: Darrell Etherington

As mentioned, you can use the Oral-B iO completely without the companion app, and it works very well. But the app is a great way to help upgrade your daily care routine, thanks to its guided brushing modes and accumulated brushing activity tracking. The guided mode shows you which region you’re currently brushing, breaking your mouth up into six separate zones (three up top, and three on the bottom). In my testing, this tracking was a bit hit or miss when it comes to accuracy, often getting wrong which area I was actively brushing. It was accurate enough to provide a general sense of where I needed to be doing a better job than I had been, however.

Over time, the app will use the info gathered from your guided sessions to provide you with specific tips on how to improve. It also allows you to self-report flossing, rinsing and any gum-bleeding for more detailed trend tracking over time.

Bottom line

Image Credits: Darrell Etherington

The Oral-B iO series sits at the very top of the company’s electric toothbrush lineup, at $249.99 for the Series 8 as reviewed, or $299.99 for the Series 9. The kit you get does include two replacement heads in addition to the one that comes on the brush for a total of 3, along with the travel carrying case and charger (you get 4 total heads on the Series 9, as well as a charging travel case on top of the additional mode an sensing capabilities of the brush itself). You can get a basic electric toothbrush for $50 or less, by comparison.

That said, the iO does offer excellent build and brushing quality, which will definitely leave your mouth feeling cleaner than with budget options. And it’s intelligent features are great if you want to be more mindful about your daily dental hygiene routine, too. That, combined with its attractive, ergonomic design, mean that this is a great option so long as you’re willing to spend a little bit more on a premium device.

To break away from D2C crowd, SmileDirectClub announces retail partnership with Walmart

Today, SmileDirectClub announced a partnership with Walmart to sell a new line of oral care products, including toothbrushes, teeth whitening treatments, a water flosser and more. For one of the top teledentistry companies, this represents a move to make its business more compelling to customers and investors alike.

Following news of the deal this morning, SmileDirectClub shares spiked, with the stock currently trading up about 21% at $10.19. That’s significant for a company that had one of the worst first-day performances of any initial public offering over $1 billion in the U.S. since 2007. Still, SmileDirectClub’s stock is nowhere near its IPO price of $23.

SmileDirectClub’s entrance into the more traditional dental care space is clearly a move to try to differentiate itself from the likes of smaller startups like Uniform Teeth and Candid, while also creeping into oral healthcare startup Quip’s territory. As the dental care space gets more crowded, it’s no wonder why SmileDirectClub is looking to expand into already-proven business models.

SmileDirectClub’s main competitor in the more traditional dental care space — other than legacy brands like Crest and Colgate — is Quip . The New York-based startup has raised more than $60 million in funding and has sold its oral care products at Target since October 2018.

To break away from D2C crowd, SmileDirectClub announces retail partnership with Walmart

Today, SmileDirectClub announced a partnership with Walmart to sell a new line of oral care products, including toothbrushes, teeth whitening treatments, a water flosser and more. For one of the top teledentistry companies, this represents a move to make its business more compelling to customers and investors alike.

Following news of the deal this morning, SmileDirectClub shares spiked, with the stock currently trading up about 21% at $10.19. That’s significant for a company that had one of the worst first-day performances of any initial public offering over $1 billion in the U.S. since 2007. Still, SmileDirectClub’s stock is nowhere near its IPO price of $23.

SmileDirectClub’s entrance into the more traditional dental care space is clearly a move to try to differentiate itself from the likes of smaller startups like Uniform Teeth and Candid, while also creeping into oral healthcare startup Quip’s territory. As the dental care space gets more crowded, it’s no wonder why SmileDirectClub is looking to expand into already-proven business models.

SmileDirectClub’s main competitor in the more traditional dental care space — other than legacy brands like Crest and Colgate — is Quip . The New York-based startup has raised more than $60 million in funding and has sold its oral care products at Target since October 2018.

Using AI to improve dentistry, VideaHealth gets a $5.4 million polish

Florian Hillen, the chief executive officer of a new startup called VideaHealth, first started researching the problems with dentistry about three years ago.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard educated researcher had been doing research in machine learning and image recognition for years and wanted to apply that research in a field that desperately needed the technology.

Dentistry, while an unlikely initial target, proved to be a market that the young entrepreneur could really sink his teeth into.

“Everyone goes to the dentist [and] in the dentist’s office, x-rays are the major diagnostic tool,” Hillen says. “But there is a lack of standard quality in dentistry. If you go to three different dentists you might get three different opinions.”

With VideaHealth (and competitors like Pearl) the machine learning technologies the company has developed can introduce a standard of care across dental practices, say Hillen. That’s especially attractive as dental businesses become rolled up into large service provider plays in much of the U.S.

Screen Shot 2019 09 16 at 16.33.16 1

Image courtesy of VideaHealth

Dental practitioners also present a more receptive audience to the benefits of automation than some other medical health professionals (ahem… radiologists). Because dentists have more than one role in the clinic they can see enabling technologies like image recognition as something that will help their practices operate more efficiently rather than potentially put people out of a job.

“AI in radiology competes with the radiologist,” says Hillen. “In dentistry we support the dentist to detect diseases more reliably, more accurately, and earlier.”

The ability to see more patients and catch problems earlier without the need for more time consuming and invasive procedures for a dentist actually presents a better outcome for both practitioners and patients, Hillen says.

It’s been a year since Hillen launched the company and he’s already attracted investors including Zetta Venture Partners, Pillar and MIT’s Delta V, who invested in the company’s most recent $5.4 million seed financing.

Already the company has collaborations with dental clinics across the U.S. through partnerships with organizations like Heartland Dental, which operates over 950 clinics in the Midwest. The company has seven employees currently and will use its cash to hire broadly and for further research and development.

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Photo courtesy of VideaHealth