Swedish Startup Optolexia Secures $5.6M to Expand AI-Powered Eye-Tracking Dyslexia Screening Tool in the U.S.

VCBeat has learned that Swedish startup Optolexia recently secured $5.6 million (€5.2 million) in strategic financing, led by Gabriel Urwitz, CEO of the private equity firm Segulah, with participation from Pomona Group. Optolexia is dedicated to digital screening for dyslexia in children, and this round of funding will help it enter the U.S. market.

Optolexia, founded in 2015 by Mattias Nilsson Benfatto and Gustaf Oqvist Seimy, is currently conducting pilot tests in four U.S. states to prepare for its product launch in the United States later this year.

The company has launched a digital tool: an AI-powered eye-tracking software designed to screen for dyslexia. Dyslexia is one of the most common neurobehavioral disorders in children, with significant individual variation in clinical presentation. Some children experience difficulty decoding linguistic structures in the brain; although this does not indicate any impairment in intelligence or memory, it hinders their ability to convert written language into comprehensible information or spoken language.

Optolexia operates by using a small camera to track children’s eye movements as they read short texts on a screen, and then leverages Microsoft Azure to compare and analyze these eye movement patterns against those of children without dyslexia.

In Sweden, Optolexia is sold directly to governments and schools; in 2016, they screened approximately 1,500 children.

Investor Gabriel Urwitz stated, “We see tremendous application potential in Optolexia. They leverage scientific and technological innovations in unique ways to generate social impact, and more importantly, they bring hope to children who struggle with reading and writing.”

“The United States is a vast market, and there is growing awareness of dyslexia,” Fredrik Wetterhal, CEO of Optolexia, pointed out in a statement. “Many people seem to recognize that it is possible to both help students and reduce societal costs through early intervention for reading and writing difficulties. We are now seeing significant interest in our services.”

The company’s founders, Benfatto and Seimy, previously conducted research on dyslexia at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Their findings indicated that dyslexia leads to abnormal eye movements during reading, a discovery that served as the foundation for their development of Optolexia.

It is worth noting that eye movement patterns themselves do not cause dyslexia; however, differences in eye movements among children during the early stages of reading upon school entry may indicate a risk of developing dyslexia.

Eye-tracking software that leverages artificial intelligence for assessment (not necessarily for medical diagnosis) is now quite prevalent. Cognoa, based in Palo Alto, United States, has adopted a similar approach for autism screening and announced earlier this week that it had secured $11.6 million in funding. Meanwhile, French startup Tilak Healthcare is developing a series of medical games designed to screen for eye diseases by tracking eye movements and retinal macular parameters.