Why Thrive, Founders Fund, and Antonio Gracias are betting on hearing aids

“Why do I have to beg my grandparents to put on their hearing aids, but no one has ever needed to ask me to put on my glasses?” That’s the question that drove Matthew de Jonge to spend six years building Fortell, an AI hearing aid startup that recently raised $163 million from the likes of Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, and Valor Equity Partners CEO Antonio Gracias. The buzzy startup aims to build hearing aids that understand the sounds around you in real time, figure out what’s important and turn down the rest — instead of turning everything up at the same time, as most hearing aids do. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan is joined by de Jonge to break down what it takes to disrupt a decades-old industry where five companies make 97% of the products, insurance won’t cover the cost, and innovation has been slow to arrive. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How de Jonge went from mechanical engineering and a hedge fund career to building handheld ultrasound machines at Butterfly Network, and why that experience gave him the confidence to take on hearing aids next. The AI architecture behind Fortell's approach, including a custom chip built by a former Google TPU designer. Why the five companies that dominate the hearing aid industry have been so slow to innovate, and how that shaped Fortell's pitch to investors. De Jonge's take on Apple's AirPods as both a hearing aid alternative and an at-home hearing test, and why he sees them as complementary rather than a threat. The regulatory hurdles around remote hearing aid fittings, and how state-level telemedicine laws are shaping Fortell's path to scale. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Chapters: 00:00 Intro 1:14 Why Matt built Fortell 5:16 The problem with hearing aids: everything's just... loud 7:36 How Fortell's AI separates important sound from noise 12:12 The funding pitch that won over Founders Fund and Thrive 16:31 Hearing aids vs. AI wearables (Meta, Apple, Legato) 20:34 Pricing, insurance, and the hearing aid "cartel" 23:25 Scaling up: new clinics and remote fitting 26:57 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices