SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF., Nov. 3, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 4Combinator, a healthcare startup incubator, announced today that its first company, Butterfly Network, has raised over $100 million to transform medical imaging and non-invasive surgery by leveraging advances in semiconductors, deep learning and cloud computing. Butterfly Network was founded by Jonathan Rothberg and a unique group of physicists and engineers from Lincoln Laboratories' through-wall radar team and MIT, including Max Tegmark, Nevada Sanchez, Greg Charvat and Tyler Ralston.
"Spending 18 percent of our GDP, or $10,000 per person, per year, on healthcare is unsustainable and out of touch with the needs of the rest of the world," said Dr. Rothberg. "At 4Combinator, our mission is to democratize healthcare by launching companies, building devices, and combining advances in biology, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence. We built Butterfly to transform the way we image the body and perform surgery."
Butterfly Network is the sixth company founded by Dr. Rothberg, who is best known for inventing and bringing to market the first "NextGen" or high-speed DNA sequencing technology. NextGen sequencing has profoundly impacted all areas of biomedical and agricultural research and become an essential tool to enable the age of personalized medicine. Now, Rothberg is using 4Combintor to support companies bringing to market novel devices to see, understand, and treat the human body in new ways.
To achieve his vision at Butterfly Network, Dr. Rothberg has brought together a unique group of experts across the physical and biological sciences. This talented team of "star warriors" and "flash boys" is backed by a world-class group of investors led by Aeris Capital and pioneering academic institutions including Stanford University.
"We bring together people to 'put a dent in the universe' and do work that will save the life of somebody they love," said Rothberg. "If you make chips like Gordon Moore, lasers like Charles Townes, crack or create code like James Watson, Barbara McClintock, Hedy Lamarr, Grace Hopper or John Carmack, come join us."
Dr. Rothberg and members of the 4Combinator scientific advisory board will be in New York City on November 13th from 7-9 PM at the Trump SoHo Hotel to speak more about 4Combinator. Register here: https://4combinator-speaker-series.eventbrite.com