Aluna Raises $15.3 Million in Series B Funding

Aluna has completed a $15.3 million Series B financing round that will allow the firm to continue growing its solution for managing asthma, cystic fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Aluna’s AI-enabled respiratory management platform allows patients to transmit data to their doctor by blowing daily into a spirometer. An app gives patients an easy way to collect symptoms, medication, activity, and environmental factors; proprietary machine learning algorithms help medical teams identify respiratory problems and take corrective action to keep their health under control.

“As two of many asthma sufferers, my co-founder and I set out from day one to build a platform that would not only keep patients healthy, but also help providers provide the best possible care,” Aluna CEO/Co-Founder Charvi Shetty said. “Our growth will enable asthma, COPD and other chronic respiratory patients and their providers to work more effectively together and prevent attacks before they happen. Down the road, we hope to leverage our lung health data to revolutionise respiratory care.”
 
Roughly one in 13 Americans has asthma, and the number is rising due to environmental factors, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Asthma attacks lead to more than 1 million emergency room visits annually, American College of Asthma, Allergy & Immunology data indicate. Aluna’s U.S. Food and Drug Administration-cleared spirometer device and app encourage patients to share their lung health with their doctor. This allows allergists, pulmonologists and other providers to offer care early and avoid costly hospital visits. Aluna is eligible for insurance coverage under remote patient monitoring.

“Aluna has completely transformed how we are able to treat asthma and COPD patients, moving us from occasional check-ins to daily monitoring,” said Warner Carr, M.D., an allergist and Aluna customer based in Irvine, Calif. “Investing in this tool was a no-brainer for me as a customer who is committed to providing the best possible outcomes for my patients.”
 
Led by previous investor Matrix Partners, the Series B round brings Aluna’s total funding since inception to $27 million. Key investors in the round also include New York-based Rho Ignition, and Carr, whose practice is an early adopter of Aluna’s platform. The Series B funding comes on the heels of a year of rapid growth, with Aluna adding thousands of new patients to its platform for a 10-fold year-over-year growth rate. The company plans to invest both on the product and commercial side to produce more spirometers, make its offering more robust and reach new patients. 
 
“Preventing unnecessary emergency visits is something patients, doctors and insurance companies all want and Aluna is uniquely positioned to provide,” Aluna Chief Operating Officer Jason Hochman said. “As we head into 2023, we plan to grow Aluna’s product and its scale with this funding and the support of our partners.”

Aluna has recently added a Silicon Valley veteran to its executive team to focus on finance as the company scales. Alex Gurevich has joined the firm as chief financial officer, bringing decades of finance and operations experience at high-growth companies including Credit Karma, Zendesk and Google. Most recently, Gurevich was chief operating officer at Octane AI, a marketing and data platform for e-commerce merchants.

“Aluna is paving the way for the entire healthcare system to discover the ways technology can change the lives of asthmatics,” Matrix General Partner Antonio Rodriguez stated. “By combining the gold standard for measuring lung function with an innovative device, the cloud, and their proprietary algorithms, the company is giving superpowers to clinicians who can more effectively treat patients.”
 
Created by co-founders Shetty and Inderjit Jutla, Aluna began as a project for UC Berkeley’s bioengineering program. Aluna’s system gamifies spirometry, encourages proper technique, and rewards patients for taking daily readings. Aluna has been awarded by the National Science Foundation for the development of its respiratory management tool. 

Matrix Partners leads pre-seed through Series A rounds. Recent investments include Afterpay, Apartment List, Canva, Courier, CTRL-Labs, Fivetran, Flock Safety, GOAT, HubSpot, LogRocket, Markforged, Oculus, Side, Steadily, and Zendesk. The company was founded in 1977.