Boston-based DANNCE.AI, which is reinventing how clinicians diagnose and treat neurological diseases, has now officially launched in the US.
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Winning the first Future Capitalism Competition in February 2024 was a pivotal moment for this HealthTech startup according to co-founder and CEO Rob Baldoni:
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Winning the Future of Capitalism Competition was a pivotal early moment for our company and changed our trajectory. The win validated our mission to improve the standard of care for movement disorders and make this care more accessible. The investment supports the transition of the company's core technology, DANNCE, from academic to clinical use
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DANNCE.AI have now raised an impressive $2.6 Million, including an initial $500k investment through the Future of Capitalism competition (The Leo Lion Company).
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DANNCE.AI (3-Dimensional Aligned Neural Network for Computational Ethology) is a markerless motion capture approach that uses deep learning to quantify behavior and detect diseases.

The company is co-founded by Dr. Tim Dunn (CSO), Dr. Jesse Marshall, and Rob Baldoni who continues:
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One in ten individuals will be diagnosed with a movement disorder during their lifetime. We are creating a world where aging adults have broad access to objective neurological screenings and new therapies for these disorders are also objectively validated.
We have brought together a powerhouse team with Dr. Tim Dunn and Dr. Jesse Marshall, two of the world’s leading experts in behavioral quantification, Shereen Shermak, our COO, and Joe Chan, our CTO, who have an extensive track record of scaling ventures and building products. We will be the first to provide clinicians and drug developers with a solution that characterizes drug effects and optimizes neurological care.
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Today, clinicians have no tools to evaluate patient movement objectively. For example, when diagnosing Parkinson’s Disease, patients perform various tasks, and clinicians manually rate the severity of their impairment on a 0-4 scale. Even the most experienced clinicians can be inconsistent in the way they score patients, and scoring is variable across doctors. High variance in scoring on an insensitive rating scale leads to impaired clinical decision-making and makes it challenging for companies to determine the efficacy of new therapeutics.

Robert Brown, Director of the Future of Capitalism Competition adds:
Rob Baldoni and the DANNCE.ai team impressed us with the potential of their technology to democratise and more accurately diagnose people with movement disorders. We are delighted to help them to bring this groundbreaking technology into everyday clinical use.
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This is just the beginning for Rob and the DANNCE.AI team and we are excited to see what the future holds for this pioneering HealthTech startup.

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