Virtuleap Secures $2.5 Million to Enhance Brain Health Through VR and AI
Virtuleap has successfully raised $2.5 million to leverage virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) in advancing brain health with its innovative product, Enhance VR.
This investment was led by GED Ventures Portugal, supporting Virtuleap, a healthtech and edtech startup. The company has created a suite of VR games designed to assess and enhance various cognitive abilities, including memory, attention, motor control, and spatial orientation.
By utilizing a single platform, Virtuleap offers vital clinical insights for brain health screening and profiling. Developed by neuroscientists, these engaging, short games serve as modern neuropsychological assessment tools, analyzed using advanced AI learning systems.
The Enhance VR program aims to provide an accessible "gym for the mind," with the potential to address learning challenges such as ADHD and other cognitive disorders. The exercises are categorized into seven cognitive domains: memory, attention, information processing, mental flexibility, problem-solving, motor control, and spatial orientation.
In addition to Enhance VR, Virtuleap is developing Cogniclear VR, a cognitive screening tool set to launch in 2024. Collaborating with partners like Lusíadas Saúde and Roche Portugal, this innovative tool aims to detect cognitive disorders early, which could lead to timely interventions and better outcomes for conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Amir Bozorgzadeh, CEO of Virtuleap, remarked, "This investment enables us to accelerate the development and commercialization of our VR cognitive solutions at a crucial time as a 'cognition crisis' looms."
The company is also creating AI algorithms that analyze volumetric datasets from psychometric, physical, and physiological data—collecting over 250,000 data points every three minutes—to potentially link cognitive performance with mental health.
GED Ventures Portugal's involvement underscores its commitment to #Tech4Purpose. Bibi Sattar Marques, a partner at GED Ventures Portugal, stated, “Investing in Virtuleap reflects our strategy to support impactful technology in healthcare. We are paving the way for a new era of accessible mental health solutions.”
GED is an independent financial group operating across Europe, the USA, and South America, managing over one billion euros in venture, private equity, and infrastructure assets.
The flagship product, Enhance VR, has attracted over 60,000 users without any marketing efforts, demonstrating its global reach with availability in major VR app stores and translations in five languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese. Additional translations into German, French, and Dutch are planned for Q1 2024.
Virtuleap's commitment to research is evidenced by four published papers, including a promising pilot study showcasing improvements in processing speed among students with ADHD. Furthermore, the company has secured $1.8 million in commercial agreements with industry leaders such as Penumbra, HP, and BehaVR, highlighting the demand for its pioneering technology. In collaboration with Roche, Cogniclear VR is poised to transform early detection of cognitive disorders, potentially surpassing existing solutions in both speed and accuracy.
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