Sonde Health Raises $19.25 Million for Voice-Based Health Monitoring

Sonde Health, a health technology company, has raised $19.25 million in its latest funding round, bringing to $35.25 million the total amount of money raised to drive its global commercial growth, deepen its voice-based respiratory and mental health monitoring technologies, and build capabilities for additional health conditions.

"Digital biomarkers are becoming a mainstay in healthcare. Today's healthcare companies are realizing how vocal biomarkers can engage people earlier in their health. The data and insights found in voice can power health monitoring and patient stratification so issues can become apparent well before a costly medical event occurs," said David Liu, CEO of Sonde Health, in a statement. "With voice and any listening device, accessible and effective health monitoring can be made available to the majority of the world."

Sonde's health-labeled voice dataset contains more than 1.2 million voice samples from more than 85,000 subjects on four continents. Sonde offers artificial intelligence-based monitoring products for multiple health conditions and can embed its technology into device chipsets for passive and safe health monitoring through voice.

"Sonde is at the forefront of a vocal biomarker revolution that has the potential to change how we detect, manage, and understand our health. They have the deepest high-quality dataset combined with leading edge-processing technology, which gives them a significant competitive advantage," Joonsoo Kim, a vice president at Partners Investment, one of the leading contributors to the funding round, said in a statement. "We believe Sonde's team and platform are primed to disrupt and add tremendous value to health monitoring around the world, and we're thrilled to support the company's mission to harness the power of voice for better health."

Sonde's fundraise follows new and expanded commercial partnerships to accelerate development and adoption of vocal biomarkers worldwide. Among them are the following:

• KT, a telecom company, will be working with Sonde to advance its voice-based businesses, including its call centers and AI voice assistants for health monitoring. It will also deploy Sonde's technology for applications in digital therapeutics and telemedicine in Asia.
• GN Group will integrate Sonde's Mental Fitness vocal biomarker into its hearing products. The company is already working with Sonde to develop an MCI vocal biomarker.
• Qualcomm, which has already integrated Sonde's vocal biomarkers into its mobile device chipsets, has extended the relationship to include its wearable chipsets.
• Koye Pharmaceuticals, which had already engaged Sonde to develop a COPD vocal biomarker, has expanded the partnership to develop a novel mental health vocal biomarker for deployment in India.