TidalSense raises £14.2M to scale AI breath test for lung disease
What's the deal? Cambridge health tech startup TidalSense has raised £14.2m ($19m) in an early-stage round to expand its AI-powered respiratory diagnostic device. Cross-Border Impact VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a North American health tech impact fund, joined returning backers BGFDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Airstream VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Foresight GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
What does it do? TidalSense's N-Tidal Diagnose is a handheld device for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), one of the UK's leading causes of death. Patients breathe normally into it for 75 seconds, and AI models trained on more than 2.5 million breaths analyse the CO₂ waveforms.
Why it matters? Traditional spirometry needs forceful exhalation and specialist administration, taking up to an hour per patient. N-Tidal lets clinicians assess four to six patients an hour instead.
Where it stands? The device won its CE mark under EU MDR in March 2025 and launched into the NHS later that year. It is now deployed across primary care and community clinics in England, Wales, and Scotland.
What's the money for? TidalSense will scale commercialisation across the UK, Ireland, and Europe, prepare for US market entry, and expand its pipeline into asthma diagnostics.
What they said? "We're still diagnosing in the 21st century with a test invented in the 1800s," said chief executive Dr Ameera Patel, adding that respiratory disease affects one in five people yet has been "neglected by governments and health systems for years."
The signal: At £14.2m, the round sits above the 95th percentile for early-stage health rounds in the UK, a sign of investor appetite for clinically validated diagnostics that are already generating real-world use inside the NHS.
Read more: UKTN
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
