Overjet, a startup focused on using AI to help dentists and insurance companies understand dental scans, today announced that it has raised $7.85 million in what it describes as a seed round.

According to Overjet’s CEO Wardah Inam (an MIT PhD in electrical engineering and computer science), the company raised the funds from Crosslink Capital, which led its round, and E14 Fund, which “only invests in MIT startups,” Inam said.

The MIT-E14 connection is not surprising, given that Overjet has been supported by two different MIT groups. Continuing the Boston-area educational links, the startup was incubated by the Harvard Innovation Lab, which Inam told TechCrunch that it is “growing out of” in terms of space.

The selection of Crosslink as its lead investor wasn’t accidental. Inam told TechCrunch that Overjet was interested in raising from Crosslink thanks to its prior investments into Weave, a startup whose software is often used in a dental context. (Weave raised a $70 million Series D at a near-unicorn valuation in 2019, TechCrunch previously reported.)

But enough about the money, let’s talk about what Overjet does.

Applied AI

When you go to the dentist, you’ll often get an x-ray taken of your teeth. Then, a dentist will read the chart and make some recommendations. They may say that you’re in good shape, and can come back for a cleaning in a few months. Or your dentist might tell you that some work is needed. The latter scenario is where Overjet comes into play.

According to Inam, Overjet’s “core technology [helps] to determine what treatments are needed.”

The CEO told TechCrunch in an interview that while most medical imaging AI services are focused on finding out if there is anything wrong (the startup executive gave an example of tumor detection) with someone, Overjet can “go one step further,” helping to not only note that there is a problem (tooth decay, to select a hypothetical), but the extent of the issue itself.

This ability to “analyze clinical data at scale” and “determine what treatments are necessary,” as Overjet’s CEO put it over the phone, is potentially attractive to both dentists and insurance companies alike.

For dentists, it’s the ability to lean on AI-styled technology to help confirm their diagnosis, or help them not miss issues that are hard to spot. Overjet may also be able to help insurance companies process their huge influx of dental images more quickly. Currently, Inam told TechCrunch, “every crown that is sent to any major insurance company is reviewed” manually by humans, something that is expensive.

AI might be able to better tell, and more quickly, if a claim is reasonable, and not fraudulent.

This also helps patients to a degree. Recalling our example of going to the dentist, how much control do you really have over the work that is done to your teeth? Not a lot, frankly. This opens up the chance for dentists to pursue unneeded treatments for financial gain. If Overjet can help root out some fraud in the system, it could lead to better patient care.

Growth

Chatting with a startup it’s hard to grok how good its tech is. In the case of Overjet, it’s nearly impossible. But if the company’s tech works as it thinks it does, it may be able to quickly grow inside its target market; we’ll have to vet the quality of its technology through the lens of business growth for the time being.

Overjet charges insurance companies per claim analyzed, even if it includes more than one x-ray. Dental practices pay on a SaaS model, Inam told TechCrunch.

The company currently has “around 20” people on staff, according to its CEO, and expects to grow this year. I’m super curious how many new customers the startup can gain this year, and how fast it can scale revenue, as well. More when we talk to Overjet again.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Overjet raises .85M for its dental-focused AI tech

It was a busy week in security.

Newly released documents shown exclusively to TechCrunch show that U.S. immigration authorities used a controversial cell phone snooping technology known as a “stingray” hundreds of times in the past three years. Also, if you haven’t updated your Android phone in a while, now would be a good time to check. That’s because a brand-new security vulnerability was found — and patched. The bug, if exploited, could let a malicious app trick a user into thinking they’re using a legitimate app that can be used to steal passwords.

Here’s more from the week.

THE BIG PICTURE

Every iPhone now has a working jailbreak

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Decrypted: iOS 13.5 jailbreak, FBI slams Apple, VCs talk cybersecurity

The COVID-19 pandemic will have a profound impact on robotics, as more companies look to automation as a way forward. While wide-scale automation had long seemed like an inevitability, the pandemic is set to accelerate the push as corporations look for processes that remove the human element from the equation.

Of course, Locus Robotics hasn’t had too much of an issue raising money previously. The Massachusetts-based startup, which raised $26 million back in April of last year, is adding a $40 million Series D to its funds. That brings the full amount to north of $105 million. This latest round, led by Zebra Technologies, comes as the company looks to expand operations with the launch of a European HQ.

“The new funding allows Locus to accelerate expansion into global markets,” CEO Rick Faulk said in a release, “enabling us to strengthen our support of retail, industrial, healthcare, and 3PL businesses around the world as they navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring that they come out stronger on the other side.”

Locus has already seen good traction here in the States for its bin-moving robots. In February, the company announced that its robots have passed 100 million units picked. The event occurred at a DHL facility in Pennsylvania. The following month, DHL agreed to deploy 1,000 of the company’s robots in 2020. In April, UPS announced that it would be piloting Locus robots in its own facilities. 

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Locus Robotics raises another M as retailers increasingly look to automate

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

“Dear Sophie” columns are accessible for Extra Crunch subscribers; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie:

I live in Sydney and an American company is offering my husband a professional job and a work visa. I’m eligible to receive a visa and a work permit under my husband’s visa. Can I form my own startup with that dependent visa and work permit or do I need to find a job with an American company? How long would we be able to stay in the U.S.?

— Aspiring in Australia

Dear Aspiring in Australia:

Congrats on naming your desire and stating your intention to start a company. That’s exciting!

Based on your question, it sounds like the company is sponsoring your husband for an E-3 visa for Australian professionals, and you would be eligible for a dependent E-3 visa and employment authorization document (EAD), also known as a work permit. Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of questions from spouses about dependent visas and working. Check out my podcasts on dependent visas and specifically about the E-3 visa for additional information.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Dear Sophie: Can I create a startup on a dependent visa from Australia?

Meal kits have had a rush of interest in recent months, with people turning to them to vary the pace of (and in some cases, completely replace) making meals at home, or ordering take out, at a time when many of us are spending a lot of time at home. Now a startup that has combined the concept of meal kits with that of smart ovens to do the cooking is announcing some funding to help expand its business.

Tovala, maker of a smart convention/broiling/steaming oven designed to automatically cook a variety of low-labor meal-kit-based meals also created by the startup (alongside cooking other food), has raised $20 million.

It’s a Series B led by Finistere Ventures — the VC that specialises in disruptive food-related businesses — with participation also from Comcast Ventures, OurCrowd and Rich Products Ventures; as well as previous backers Origin Ventures, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Crate & Barrel founder Gordon Segal, New Stack Ventures and the University of Chicago. It brings the total raised by the company, which was originally incubated at Y Combinator, to just under $42 million.

Chicago-based Tovala is not disclosing its current valuation, but founder and CEO David Rabie confirms that it is materially higher than its previous valuation. (For some context, PitchBook notes that it was a modest $38 million as of last May when it raised a Series A extension, but Rabie would not confirm the amount.) It comes as the startup has crossed 1 million meals sold to its customers since launching in 2017, although it’s not disclosing how many of its ovens it has sold.

The bulk of Tovala’s growth has been in the last 10 months, Rabie said: “Our growth has been dramatic since last year, and COVID-19 has accelerated it in every way.”

Rabie has worked at a variety of food companies over the years, among other jobs, including a short stint at Google, and he describes himself as having “a passion for cooking” instead of ordering take-out when it comes to eating at home. All the same, he said that he started Tovala in a period when he was especially short on time. So short, in fact, that even a typical meal-kit service that requires some chopping and cooking and usually around 20-30 minutes of preparation was too much time for him to give over to the process.

Around then, he also noticed that there wasn’t a service that had thought to combine the hardware of a handy “smart” oven with services around it in the area of delivering meal kits. “There weren’t smart ovens but there were smart things, and there were meal kits,” he said, “but nothing that combined those, nothing that hit the nail on the head.”

Tovala’s basic premise is that it provides a complete meal, where everything is ready-chopped, marinated and blended, the work you do as the customer is simply to open packets, add things to each other in less than a minute in the pre-supplied baking trays, scan QR codes using the Tovala app, and let its oven then do the rest.

The oven itself sells for $299 if you buy it on its own, or $199 if you commit to ordering meals six times over the next six months (which sell currently for $11.99 per single serving).

While there is a simplicity in the basic value proposition of selling an oven designed to cook the meals you have pre-prepared and sell along with it, that business alone is highly competitive. Considering just the many options of “short-cutting” cooking from scratch, you have very direct competitors like Suvie, which also makes ovens and meal kits; various meal kit companies like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh; a plethora of ready-meals you can microwave, boil or bake from grocery stores and other places; plus the many businesses out there doing deliveries of take-out food.

That’s where Rabie’s approach considering other ways of extending Tovala’s business become interesting.

The oven, for starters, can also be used as a convection/broiling/steaming oven for anything you might want to cook, but it has also been pre-programmed to cook some 750 other ready-meals (such as Trader Joe’s burritos) by way of scanning codes into the Tovala app. I asked, but as of yet Rabie said Tovala does not have any plans for a “Nespresso”-style approach of working with any other meal kit providers to make meals that can be cooked in its oven.

Tovala’s also done one “pop-up” chef experience where a well-known Chicago cook created a few meals for Tovala, and that proved popular and might be repeated with others, Rabie said. And it’s not all focused on its own hardware. Last year the company partnered with LG so that people could buy its ready-meals to be cooked in LG smart ovens.

It also counts the chicken giant Tyson as an existing investor. For now, the two have yet to collaborate on meals for the Tovala oven, Rabie said, but you can imagine how it and others (such as Finistere portfolio company Memphis Meats) might craft specific dishes for the Tovala oven, creating further revenue streams for the startup and more use cases for people who fork out to buy its hardware.

On the subject of the hardware: Considering how so many startups built around “disruptive” hardware have stumbled over the years because of the unit economics, supply chain issues and other complications that fall under the maxim of “hardware is hard,” I asked if it’s been a stumbling block at all for Tovala. No, is the short answer.

“It’s a misconception that hardware is hard or expensive,” he said. “It’s always more expensive than software, but really it depends on how you go about it.” Some companies might spend a fortune on designing a product, “millions or tens of millions” on prototyping and more before ever getting anything out into the market.

“We did not go down that path,” he said. “We launched in 2017 having raised a few million dollars to build the oven and the food infrastructure. There is a way to do it without having to spend millions.” Wisely, he added that the trick is to scale with thoughtfulness: “Hardware fails when companies lose sight of their value propositions, and they forget what problem they are trying to solve.”

To that end, the funding is unlikely to be used for more development for now on the oven itself, he added.

“Tovala uniquely sits at the intersection of trends in the smart home and meal kit spaces: Meals enabled by an automated device, delivering convenience without compromise. We recognize Tovala’s potential to own the kitchen countertop and look forward to being part of their expansion journey as we increase our investment in the food space,” said Arama Kukutai, co-founder and partner at Finistere Ventures, in a statement. “Tovala demonstrated substantive growth and industry-leading retention even before the current shift in consumer food delivery models, and we think the company is poised to lead the reinvention of the food delivery market as it matures.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Tovala gobbles up M for its smart oven+meal kit service

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Used-car marketplace Vroom continued its march towards going public yesterday with the release of an updated IPO filing. The documents it filed provides pricing information for a somewhat odd public offering.

As a business, the heavily venture-backed Vroom is immature. It generates very little gross profit from its revenue (implying that it is unable to price its services attractively from a business perspective), and while it has managed consistent revenue growth, the company’s top-line gains (+39.3% in 2019) came at the price of rising unprofitability (+67.9% in 2019, on a net basis).

Even more, the firm’s numbers are deteriorating in Q2 due to COVID-19 and related disruptions. But, today’s public markets are prepared to move inversely to news, and Vroom, by going public as Q2 crawls in June, may manage to get its IPO done while stocks are back near record highs.

Let’s explore the company’s proposed $15 to $17 IPO price range and its implied valuation to see if we can parse what the company (and its investors) might be thinking.

Cheap, yet expensive

In its S-1/A filing, Vroom reports that it expects to price its IPO at between $15 and $17 per share, a range that may shift higher or lower depending on investor enthusiasm, or lack thereof. Vroom hopes to sell 18.75 million shares in its debut, generating gross proceeds of between $281.25 million and $318.75 million.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Vroom targets nearly B valuation in impending IPO