Why Thrive, Founders Fund, and Antonio Gracias are betting on hearing aids
- ID
- 25098
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 16 Sep 2026, 11:30 PM
- Fetched
- 16 Sep 2026, 11:40 PM
- Provider
- TechCrunch Startups
- Category
- startup
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/podcast/why-thrive-founders-fund-and-antonio-gracias-are-betting-on-hearing-aids/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/category/startups/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 4.5
- Created
- 16 Sep 2026, 11:41 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- startup_foundersai_ml_learners
What happened
Fortell, an AI hearing aid startup founded by Matthew de Jonge, raised $163M from Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, and Valor Equity Partners CEO Antonio Gracias. The company builds hearing aids that use AI to selectively amplify important sounds and suppress the rest, rather than turning everything up uniformly, and runs on a custom chip designed by a former Google TPU engineer.
Why it matters
The hearing aid market is dominated by five companies making 97% of products with little innovation, and insurance typically won't cover costs — a classic incumbent-stagnation thesis founders can study. The detail worth noting is Fortell's bet on a custom chip for real-time on-device audio processing, which is a concrete example of the edge-AI hardware trend that affects any builder deciding whether to rely on cloud APIs or invest in custom silicon.
Discussion angle
When does it make sense for an AI startup to invest in custom silicon versus running on commodity chips or cloud APIs — and does Fortell's $163M raise suggest the funding environment rewards that bet?