A handful of startups have built their businesses around offering fully-body scans, available to anyone to screen for medical conditions before symptoms arise. With Kardashian’s help, the scans were finally making headlines — and healthtech startup Ezra felt their impact.
“The day that Kim Kardashian got a scan, even though it wasn’t an Ezra scan, our day-over-day revenue spiked,” Ezra CEO and cofounder Emi Gal told Business Insider.
Those tailwinds have propelled growth for Ezra, which partners with radiology clinics to perform full-body MRI scans. It uses its AI-powered tech to speed up the costly procedure while maintaining image quality.
Ezra provides its tech at 18 clinics in seven cities, and the startup just landed a fresh bundle of cash to keep expanding. Ezra announced it raised $21 million, co-led by Healthier Capital, the new VC firm launched at the end of 2023 by One Medical’s former CEO Amir Dan Rubin.
FirstMark Capital co-led the raise alongside Healthier Capital. Firms including Allianz Life Ventures, Gaingels, Republic, Mana Ventures, Credo Ventures, Seedcamp, LDV Capital, and Accomplice, and angel investors including 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, former chairman of the UK’s national health service David Prior, and Wellville founder Esther Dyson, also participated in the round.
While Ezra’s scans can be used to check in on and monitor a patient’s general well-being — Gal said about a third of Ezra’s customers are biohackers — the startup’s primary focus is early cancer detection.
That issue is personal for Ezra cofounder and CEO Emi Gal, who started the company after his mother died from metastatic cancer.
“The closest thing we have for a cure for cancer is early detection,” he said. And, with Ezra’s scans, that startup has “helped hundreds of people find cancer,” he added.
Ezra uses three products to improve how the full-body MRIs are conducted and analyzed. Its main tool, Ezra Flash, uses AI to reduce the noise in MRI scans to produce clear images while cutting the time the patient spends in the machine. The startup also has AI-powered solutions to help radiologists read the scans and give patients easy-to-understand scan results.
Ezra’s scans have gotten more affordable with the help of the startup’s AI since speeding up the MRI process can dramatically reduce the cost of the scan. Still, its cancer-focused scan, which takes 30 minutes, costs $1,350, putting it out of reach for many patients. If examining organs that require additional tests, like through a separate heart and lung CT scan, the startup may charge up to $2,500.
Critics of full-body scans like Ezra’s argue most people don’t need to shell out thousands of dollars for a scan without symptoms, and in fact, these scans could pick up abnormalities that are ultimately benign.
One of Ezra’s top priorities, Gal said, is continuing to improve its tech to cut down the time required in the MRI machine and thus reduce costs. Gal said the startup can get that duration down to 10 minutes and charge closer to $500.
“We’ve had some internal breakthroughs that we’re excited about that give us confidence we’re going to get to a $500 scan in a couple of years, so we want to double down on that,” he said.
Ezra aims to hit profitability after the February fundraise. Gal said the startup is projected to reach cash flow breakeven this year. To date, Ezra has raised $41 million.
The company said it doubled revenue in 2023 and, aided by its latest cash infusion, plans to expand to 50 locations in 20 cities this year.
See the 22-slide pitch deck Ezra used to land $21 million.
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