Cape Town-based healthtech startup AI Diagnostics has raised R85 million, roughly $4.5 million to $5 million, in a pre-Series A round to push forward the rollout of its AI-enabled digital stethoscope.
The financing was led by The Steele Foundation for Hope, with support from iFSP Group and the Global Innovation Fund. Early angel investors also joined the round, alongside returning backers Africa Health Ventures and Savant.
The company says the new capital will go into clinical research, validation of its AI models, and the operational buildout needed to expand its hardware across South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia.
At the center of the company’s model is the Ostium digital stethoscope, paired with its proprietary AI software, AI.TB. The device is designed to detect tuberculosis by analyzing lung sounds in real time, giving frontline health workers a screening tool that does not depend on specialist equipment or advanced clinical expertise at the point of first contact.
Founded in 2020 by Braden van Breda, Johan Coetzee, and Mark van Breda, AI Diagnostics is trying to move TB screening closer to the communities where patients first seek care. Its target users include community health workers, nurses, and pharmacists, groups that often serve as the first point of contact in health systems stretched by limited staff and infrastructure.
Using the Ostium device, a health worker can capture lung sounds while the AI software looks for acoustic patterns linked to TB.
When the system identifies a likely case, the patient is referred for confirmatory testing. According to CEO Braden van Breda, the real value of the model is that it flags possible TB cases immediately and helps widen access to screening across locations that often lack specialist capacity.
The startup already has approval from the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority and has screened more than 1,000 patients in South Africa. It is also expanding clinical research activities across more than 10 countries in Africa and Asia.
Backers say the product has been built for difficult clinical environments, where devices often need to withstand harsh conditions and repeated use.
Joe Exner, CEO of The Steele Foundation for Hope, said the company’s advantage comes from building in South Africa, close to the burden it is trying to address, and from working directly with clinical partners on the ground.
That proximity, he said, shaped both the device’s design and the lung sound dataset the team has spent years assembling.
The funding arrives at a time when there is growing interest in commercial models that address diseases long underfunded by venture capital. For many years, health problems affecting low- and middle-income countries were treated mainly as public health or philanthropic concerns.
AI Diagnostics and its investors are arguing for a different view, one where impact and commercial viability can sit in the same business.
That argument carries weight in Africa, where cost pressure and infrastructure gaps often force medtech founders to design products that are practical from day one.
Those constraints can produce solutions that are more durable and more adaptable than products built for markets with abundant resources. AI Diagnostics appears to be leaning into that reality.
The company’s potential extends beyond tuberculosis screening because its acoustic AI technology can be adapted to detect various respiratory and heart issues, effectively turning a common medical tool into a versatile early-detection system.
By proving that the technology remains accurate at scale while keeping the equipment low-cost, the company could become a major player in global healthcare far beyond its initial focus.
This post was culled from Launch Base Africa.
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