Smart Toilet Sensor Startup Is Flush with $10M Funding Leave a comment
More than six in ten Americans had some sort of symptom signaling poor digestive health in just the past week, yet most still have no way to track what’s happening in the bathroom. On Tuesday, an Austin-based startup seeking to help solve that problem closed its Series A round.
Throne Science — which sells an AI-powered toilet camera — snagged $10 million, bringing its fundraising total to nearly $18 million. The round was led by Will Ventures, with participation from Emerson Collective, Moxxie, Felix Capital, Cosmic Venture Partners and Offscript.
The startup, founded in 2023, exists in a category that has gone largely untouched by the wearables boom.
“You can choose from 20 different devices to track your sleep, cardio, metabolic health, respiratory rate and exercise — but gut health, hydration and urinary function are still, by and large, a black box,” said Throne CEO Scott Hickle.
And that is all despite how common the underlying issues are, given the majority of Americans experience gastrointestinal symptoms regularly, he noted.
Hickle added Americans face a roughly 10% lifetime risk of developing cancer of the lower gastrointestinal or urinary tract. Colorectal cancer in particular, once considered a disease of old age, is now the leading cause of cancer death among U.S. adults under age 50.
“Ultimately, our mission and vision is to build what we call the smoke detector for colon cancer,” he declared.
Throne’s device, which launched to consumers in March, clips onto the underside of the toilet seat, with sensors that face only downward into the bowl. It uses Bluetooth to identify who is using the toilet within about three seconds — distinguishing between household members while staying dormant for guests — so users can go about their normal bathroom routine and then receive what Hickle calls “a fresh report card with every flush.”
The company’s system relies on two layers of AI. The first is a pipeline of about a dozen computer vision models that read the physical characteristics of waste and convert that into health metrics. The second layer turns those metrics into daily, personalized insights, similar to how Whoop or Oura deliver coaching, Hickle explained.
Throne’s AI-powered gut health coach asks users about their lifestyle after a bad gut health episode — what they ate, whether they were stressed, slept poorly or traveled. Hickle noted this allows it to gradually learn which personal factors correlate with good and bad days.
The device costs $399, and the subscription needed for it to work is $5.99 per month or $69.99 annually.
Hickle said he often jokes that Throne’s target customer is “everyone who poops.” But in practice, he thinks the customer base breaks down into a few distinct groups.
Some are people who are already frustrated by years of digestive issues. They want to finally get to see their own patterns clearly instead of relying on memory, which Hickle notes is notoriously unreliable when it comes to bathroom habits. Others are the types who already track their sleep and exercise and see gut health as “the missing layer.” Hickle pointed out people in this category are particularly drawn to hydration tracking, since hydration levels can swing dramatically over the course of a day.
A third group uses the device to monitor family members, who are typically their aging parents or children with special needs. That’s not a use case Throne originally built for, Hickle said, but one that’s emerged as “a surprisingly beautiful” outcome of the product.
Though it’s an early category, Throne isn’t without competition. Hickle named Kohler — the more-than-century-old toilet manufacturer — as its main rival, along with a handful of international players that have yet to launch.
He argued Throne’s edge lies in both hardware and software — noting that Kohler’s smart sensor product requires users to scan a fingerprint each time to identify who’s using it, whereas Throne’s system is “truly hands-free and secure.”
Much of the startup’s new capital will go toward R&D, clinical validation and consumer education, Hickle said — the last of which he considers essential, given that “nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, ‘I’m going to put a camera in my toilet today.'”
Photo: Antonio Hugo Photo, Getty Images
