DeepPath AI Secures RMB 15 Million in Seed Funding, Files for Hong Kong IPO

VCBeat has learned that Hangzhou Dipath Technology Co., Ltd. (“Dipath”), an AI-powered medical imaging computer-aided diagnosis company, has recently completed a RMB 15 million angel financing round, led by investors including Jiangmen Ventures.

Dipath, established in January 2017, is a technology-driven high-tech enterprise led by two Chinese scientists based in the United States, Professor Yang Lin and Professor Li Kang. By providing AI-powered big data analytics solutions for medical imaging in precision medicine, the company aims to address the critical shortage of pathologists in China and facilitate the implementation of tiered diagnosis and treatment. Its solutions encompass computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) in hospitals, tiered diagnosis and treatment systems, and scientific research and development, including cancer diagnosis and grading based on pathological image analysis.

Currently, the company employs more than 20 staff members with master’s or doctoral degrees. Its R&D team hails from prestigious universities both in China and abroad, including Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, with expertise spanning machine learning, computer vision, and digital pathology analysis.

Dipath’s team has been engaged in scientific research on computer vision, machine learning, and digital pathology analysis since 2002. Through 15 years of accumulation, it has developed world-leading high-throughput microscopic image processing technology and amassed a massive library of digital pathology images.

Currently, the company's product portfolio mainly includes AI-assisted diagnostic systems and digital pathology remote consultation systems.Capable of processing and analyzing whole-slide digital pathology images exceeding 1 GB in size within 5–10 seconds on standard computers, while achieving an accuracy rate of over 98% in differentiating between benign and malignant cases for several types of cancer., with technological capabilities at the global forefront. Its solutions encompass computer-aided diagnosis in hospitals, tiered diagnosis and treatment, and scientific research and development.

By providing effective digital pathology image analysis tools, the founding team published two articles on their research findings in 2015 in *Nature Medicine* (Impact Factor: 29.886 in 2016), one of the top medical journals. In 2017, a study featuring data analysis provided by Dipath was published as the cover article in *Molecular Therapy*, the official journal of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy.

Meanwhile, the founder’s innovative work on digital pathology analysis algorithms has been published in top-tier international conferences and journals in computer vision and artificial intelligence, including CVPR, ECCV, MICCAI, AAAI, and PAMI. He was invited to deliver keynote speeches on deep learning-based digital pathology analysis at the main conference of CVPR 2017 and the World Congress of Pathology.

Gao Xinxin, founding partner of Jiangmen Capital and an investor in this round, stated that China currently faces a shortage of nearly 100,000 pathologists. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning to interpret pathological slides and assist physicians in making diagnoses represents a highly valuable application scenario. However, the barrier to sustained innovation in the field of AI-based medical imaging is significantly high, requiring not only expertise in AI but also profound background knowledge in the medical domain. The technical accumulation and industry experience of the Dipath team have led Jiangmen Capital to believe that it can deliver value in addressing this challenge.