Fortell raises $163M for AI hearing aids that focus on the sounds that matter

Fortell, a startup building hearing aids driven by artificial intelligence, has raised $163 million in a round whose backers include Founders Fund, Thrive Capital and Antonio Gracias, the CEO of Valor Equity Partners, according to TechCrunch. The company's devices are designed to make sense of the sounds around a wearer in real time, work out which ones actually matter and turn the rest down — a deliberate break from how conventional hearing aids behave.

Selective listening instead of raw volume

Most hearing aids on the market treat incoming sound the same way: they raise the volume on everything at once. A conversation partner, a busy street and a crowded restaurant all get boosted together, which helps explain why many users wear their devices reluctantly or give up on them entirely.

Fortell's answer, as founder Matthew de Jonge explained in an episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast published on September 16, in conversation with Rebecca Bellan, is to replace blunt amplification with AI that understands a sound scene and filters it. His framing of the problem, as quoted by TechCrunch: "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?" Glasses get worn without argument; hearing aids have to be negotiated. De Jonge spent six years building Fortell to close that gap.

Six years of work against five incumbents

The industry he is entering is unusually concentrated. TechCrunch reports that five companies manufacture roughly 97% of the hearing aids sold, that insurance commonly refuses to cover the cost, and that innovation in the category has been slow to arrive. A handful of dominant suppliers, customers paying out of their own pockets and limited competitive pressure is exactly the configuration that venture investors tend to see as vulnerable to a well-funded challenger.

What the money signals

The size of the round and the names attached to it stand out. Founders Fund and Thrive Capital are among the most closely watched investors in AI, and their participation — alongside Valor Equity Partners CEO Antonio Gracias, as listed by TechCrunch — suggests conviction that the next wave of AI products may be physical devices rather than pure software. TechCrunch's report does not disclose a valuation or the stage of the round.

Why it matters

The round is one of the larger recent bets on AI running on a wearable device rather than in the cloud or behind a chat interface. Real-time sound understanding in a small, always-worn form factor is a demanding engineering problem, and solving it convincingly would have applications well beyond hearing assistance.

For consumers, the stakes are price and experience. In a market where five firms control 97% of production and insurers rarely pay, buyers have had little leverage, and the products have evolved slowly as a result. A credible entrant that makes hearing aids something people actually want to wear — de Jonge's glasses comparison is the benchmark — could push the incumbents to improve on both fronts, or lose share to a newcomer with fresh capital and a different idea of what a hearing aid should do.