AliveCor Secures $5.8M in Equity Funding to Expand ECG Device Portfolio

VCBeat (WeChat Official Account: vcbeat) learned from foreign media reports that smart ECG company AliveCor secured $5.8 million in equity financing on October 22, 2019, local time. This equity financing will support AliveCor in expanding its ECG (electrocardiogram) devices.

A spokesperson for the Mountain View, California headquarters stated that nine investors had collectively invested $5.8 million toward its $9.2 million target. Filing documents indicate that the first transaction occurred on October 15. Furthermore, specific details about the investors have not yet been disclosed.

Since its inception, AliveCor has raised a total of $69.3 million in financing, completing Series A, B, and D funding rounds in 2011, 2012, and 2017, respectively. Notably, in January 2019, AliveCor secured a $20 million loan from Oxford Finance LLC. This senior secured loan was utilized as working capital to promote its clinical-grade ECG monitoring products.

Founded in 2010, AliveCor is a startup in the medical device sector. The company is dedicated to developing mobile solutions for heart disease and pioneered KardiaMobile, a “machine learning”-enabled, FDA-cleared clinical-grade personal ECG monitor. It is the most clinically validated mobile ECG solution on the market. KardiaMobile transforms any smartphone into an ECG recorder with professional medical-device quality, enabling users to assess their cardiac health with clinical-grade accuracy anytime, anywhere. The entire process takes only 30 seconds to determine whether the patient’s heart rhythm is normal, and the ECG data can be emailed to the patient or their physician.

According to publicly available information on the AliveCor website, KardiaMobile is the most frequently used ECG product by consumers in the market. Due to its portability and professional-grade performance, KardiaMobile has gained recognition from numerous medical experts worldwide and is employed by healthcare institutions as an adjunct tool for cardiac care. AliveCor states that by using KardiaMobile or KardiaBand in conjunction with the Kardia app, users can determine whether they have atrial fibrillation based on their electrocardiogram (ECG) readings.

Looking back at the industry, AliveCor faces intense competition from new technological entry points for at least one of its products. Apple launched the Series 4 Watch with ECG functionality in 2018. A year later, AliveCor announced it would discontinue sales of the KardiaBand, an FDA-approved ECG wristband for the Apple Watch. At the time of the watch’s release, Ira Bahr, then-interim CEO, stated that AliveCor’s broader business would not be threatened by the new competitor.

In addition, the company recently appointed Priya Abani, a veteran of Amazon Alexa, as its next CEO, following the resignation of former CEO Vic Gundotra in January.

(Compiled by Xiong Hui)