auryx raises £1.5m seed to turn earbud microphones into continuous health monitors
This article covers auryx, a healthtech startup, which has raised £1.5m in a seed funding round to develop a platform that turns everyday microphones into continuous health monitors. The funding will support hardware integration, model development, commercial partnerships and team expansion to scale acoustic diagnostics into earbuds and other microphone-equipped consumer devices.
auryx, a healthtech startup, has raised £1.5 million in a seed funding round to develop a platform that turns everyday microphones into continuous health monitors. The investment will be used to advance hardware integration and model development, deepen commercial partnerships and expand the team — a step the company says will help move acoustic diagnostics from lab research into consumer devices.
Why it matters
Most consumer health wearables rely on optical sensors that use light to detect blood flow, a method prone to motion artefact when worn on the wrist. auryx is pursuing a different vector: acoustic sensing from the ear. The company argues that the ear is relatively stable during everyday activity and that microphones already present in earbuds can capture a broader range of physiological signals, from heart and respiratory rates to measures such as cardiac output and blood pressure.
If the approach scales, it could add a low-friction route to passive, continuous monitoring because it uses existing hardware and requires no change in user behaviour. That combination — clinically relevant signals delivered via widely used consumer devices — is what makes the seed round notable for health monitoring.
Inside the product
Aurxy’s platform analyses acoustic signals produced by the heart, lungs and blood flow. The software-focused model aims to extract clinically relevant metrics from microphone inputs rather than adding new sensors to devices. The company is initially targeting the earbud market, where devices are already worn by hundreds of millions of people, and plans to expand into other microphone-equipped products and health applications.
The funding will support tighter hardware integration, further model development and commercial partnership work. auryx is also hiring across engineering and commercial functions to build a platform intended to scale across billions of devices.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Celero Ventures, with participation from EWOR, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, Vento, PurposeTech and a syndicate of other institutional and angel investors.
Cambridge Enterprise Ventures is notable for backing University of Cambridge spinouts and providing early-stage support to teams commercialising university research. The investor group reflects interest from both venture and angel networks in commercialising academic work in audio diagnostics.
In the announcement, Nick Cochran, Partner at Celero Ventures, said:
auryx caught our attention immediately: Cambridge research, proven science, and a software-only approach that turns the microphones already inside noise-cancelling earbuds into continuous health sensors. No new hardware. No behaviour change. Just a fundamentally smarter use of devices hundreds of millions of people already wear.
In the announcement, Quinten Selhorst, Partner at EWOR, said:
Erika stood out to us early through true out of distribution achievement in her career and deep sector insight. Over time, what became even more evident is her unique blend of raw horsepower and emotional intelligence. If anyone can bring this new category of technology to market and scale it, it’s Erika and her team.
In the announcement, Mahesh Santiapillai, Investor at Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, said:
auryx takes a novel approach to health sensing, using sound to capture physiological signals in a space that remains largely unexplored in consumer devices. This creates significant whitespace and is a real opportunity for the future of health monitoring.
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Founder perspective
Aurxy was founded by researchers from the University of Cambridge. Erika Bondareva leads the company as co-founder and CEO; Kayla-Jade Butkow worked on measuring vital signs with in-ear microphones; and Cecilia Mascolo, who has more than a decade of research at the intersection of machine learning and audio diagnostics, serves as Chief Scientific Officer.
In the announcement, Erika Bondareva, Co-founder & CEO at auryx, said:
We spent years in research proving that sound carries more health information than anyone had thought to listen for. auryx exists because we decided it was time to start doing something with this finding beyond the lab. Now we are putting it to work into devices people already wear, making continuous health monitoring something that just happens, without anyone having to think about it.
The bigger picture
Aurxy’s software-first approach fits a wider trend in healthtech toward passive, device-native monitoring that minimises user burden. Converting ubiquitous consumer microphones into health sensors could lower device and adoption barriers, but bringing acoustic diagnostics into clinical use will still require robust validation and regulatory pathways.
The deal highlights continuing momentum for UK university spinouts that translate academic audio and machine learning research into commercial health products. It also underlines growing interest from healthtech investors in non-invasive, sensor-light approaches to continuous monitoring — an area likely to attract further capital as teams move from proof of concept to real-world validation.
This funding round keeps the UK and Cambridge research community in focus as a source of applied healthtech innovation that aims to bridge lab findings and mainstream consumer devices.
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