The Startup Using AI To Make Hearing Aids Better

 In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at Fortell’s efforts to make a better hearing aid, Abby Care’s business getting payment for caregivers, J&J’s $5.5 billion talc settlement, Scribe Therapeutics’ IPO, and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

More than a decade ago, Matthew de Jonge, 38, first had the idea to build a better hearing aid after watching his grandparents retreat into social isolation as their hearing loss made it hard for them to follow conversations. But the technology wasn’t quite there. “In 2015, it felt like science fiction,” de Jonge recalls, describing the challenge to build a device that can differentiate sounds and home in on what’s important, especially in environments with lots of ambient noise, like a cocktail party or crowded restaurant.

After a stint at hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, he worked as a product manager at Butterfly Network, which was developing a pocket-sized ultrasound machine. It was only after the pandemic pushed meetings to Zoom, which uses AI to mute background noises, that he realized a much better hearing aid was finally possible. “Zoom is the easiest version of the problem, and the hearing aid is the gnarliest,” he says.

He launched Fortell in early 2021 with former Butterfly colleagues Andrew Casper, 40, and Igor Lovchinsky, 41, as technical cofounders. (Operational cofounder Cole Morris, 38, joined from Oscar Health.) It took a bit longer than expected, but the hearing aids, launched in December, are so popular that they’ve been near-impossible to get. Customers like KKR’s billionaire chair Henry Kravis and comedian Steve Martin have forked over $6,800 for the devices, currently available only at Fortell’s Manhattan audiology clinic or by appointment in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Palm Beach, Florida.

The company (one of 20 companies on this year’s Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups list) has now raised $163 million from investors that include Founders Fund, Thrive Capital and Valor Equity Partners at a valuation of $740 million. And it’s got more locations planned, in Boston, San Francisco and Palo Alto, California. The biggest limit on expansion, says de Jonge, is its ability to hire audiologists to staff new clinics. “This should not be a status symbol,” de Jonge says. “We want this to be available to as many people as possible.”

For a longer conversation with de Jonge, see our video interview here.