- A father-son duo founded MAUI Imaging out of their Silicon Valley garage in 2006.
- The ultrasound startup has raised about $40 million to date.
- It aims to expedite diagnoses with imaging that can see beyond traditional devices.
Medical startup MAUI Imaging announced Tuesday it has raised $14 million in Series D funding to develop ultrasound technology that can glimpse beyond traditional devices.
While ultrasounds are mostly used for soft tissue, MAUI says it's developing a system to see through and around traditional barriers like bone, gas, fat, instruments, and implants. The company aims to expedite diagnosis and treatment, particularly in trauma scenarios, given that this kind of imaging typically requires CT or MRI scans.
A father-son duo founded MAUI — an acronym for Multiple Aperture Ultrasound Insonification — out of their Silicon Valley garage in 2006.
The late Don Specht started developing the technology while building space telescopes at Lockheed Martin, and sought — alongside his son David, a former Air Force flyer-turned-entrepreneur who serves as MAUI's CEO — to apply it to the human body.
"We had to wait for Moore's Law to catch up," David Specht said of MAUI's long developmental road.
The company emerged from stealth in August 2024 with a $4 million Department of Defense contract to study its applications in the field. The military is particularly interested in using the portable system for trauma assessment by corpsmen or medics with minimal training, Specht said.
"They're trying to move the decision-making point as far forward as possible because they don't have enough doctors," Specht said.
He added that MAUI's imaging results in a massive trove of data that could be useful for AI health tools.
MAUI counts eight employees and eight consultants, and it has raised roughly $40 million to date.
The Series D included equity funding and was led by ultrasound device company Acertara, which now has exclusive distribution rights to the system. The average sales price for the system is $85,000, plus maintenance costs, Specht said.
While the FDA has cleared the device for traditional ultrasound uses, MAUI — which has 160 patents — will use data gleaned from its clinical trials with the military as it seeks clearance to make claims about seeing through and around obstructions.
Here's a look at the pitch deck MAUI Imaging used to raise its $14 million Series D. Some slides and details have been redacted in order to share the deck publicly.
