A prevention-focused co-founded by the head of a Stanford research lab is making an expensive bet with its latest fundraise: that it can build a better full-body scanner than medical device behemoths selling MRIs to health systems.
Palo Alto-based Q Bio raised $27 million in “strategic funding” from existing investors including Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Founders Fund, the company shared with STAT exclusively. The venture arm of Canadian tech company TELUS, which sells products ranging from telehealth to cell phone service, joined as a new investor. Mike Snyder, a Stanford genetics professor who leads a lab focused on genomics, personalized medicine and early disease detection, co-founded the company.
The funding, executives tell STAT, will go toward manufacturing of Q Bio’s full-body scanner, Mark I, which is intended to be more comfortable, open, quick and comprehensive compared to a traditional MRI scanner.
