BeCertain raises £1.7m led by Sure Valley Ventures with support from Innovate UK
This article covers BeCertain, a healthtech startup spun out of King’s College London and the University of Surrey, which has raised £1.7m in a pre-seed funding round led by Sure Valley Ventures and supported by Innovate UK’s Investor Partnership Growth Catalyst programme. The funding will be used to develop an AI assistant for interpreting 2D intraoral X-rays, aiming to reduce diagnostic inconsistency and speed clinical decision making for dental clinicians and practices.
BeCertain, a healthtech startup spun out of King’s College London and the University of Surrey, has raised £1.7 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Sure Valley Ventures and supported by Innovate UK’s Investor Partnership Growth Catalyst programme. The funding will be used to advance the company’s AI software assistant for interpreting 2D intraoral X-rays — a technology the founders say aims to reduce diagnostic inconsistency and speed clinical decision making in dental practice.
Why it matters
Around 20 million dental X-rays are taken each year in the United Kingdom. Diagnoses from those images can vary considerably between clinicians, and the press release cites diagnostic error rates above 50% for certain findings. Missed or late diagnoses can delay treatment, harm patients and expose practices to litigation and lost revenue. Tools that improve reliability and workflow could therefore have tangible clinical and commercial impact across primary dental care and community services.
BeCertain positions its product as a way to increase diagnostic consistency while protecting patient data and fitting into existing imaging workflows — issues that matter to clinicians, practice managers and commissioners alike.
Inside the product
BeCertain’s system uses what it describes as uncertainty-aware AI to detect a range of dental conditions from standard 2D intraoral X-rays, including tooth decay, bone loss, infections and restoration defects. Rather than offering a single black-box verdict, the software provides calibrated confidence scores so clinicians can see how certain the model is about each assessment, an approach intended to support rather than replace clinical judgement.
The technology was developed from research led by Dr Yunpeng Li and Professor Owen Addison. The initial project received a £1.75 million National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) i4i Product Development Award. BeCertain says its software integrates with common dental imaging systems and is designed with data privacy measures to keep patient information secure. The company also entered King’s MedTech Venture Builder in 2025, a 12-month programme hosted by the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering to help translate clinical research into investment-ready ventures.
Who are the investors?
The round is led by Sure Valley Ventures (SVV) and backed by Innovate UK’s Investor Partnership Growth Catalyst programme. The announcement also highlights institutional and ecosystem support that helped move the project from academic research to a commercial spinout, including funding and support from NIHR and involvement from Innovate Surrey Ltd and King’s College London accelerator activity.
In the announcement, Barry Downes, Managing Partner at SVV, said:
What stood out was the founders' rare combination of world-class research and frontline clinical expertise, and their drive to commercialise this technology to transform everyday dental practice.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Yunpeng Li, Co-founder & CEO at BeCertain, said:
Every missed diagnosis represents a missed opportunity for a patients. The hard part in clinical AI isn't detection, it's trust. That's what we've built: a system that tells clinicians how confident it is rather than issuing a black-box verdict, that keeps patient data protected, and that we evaluate at scale. Our system helps identify a broad range of common conditions, including tooth decay, bone loss, infections, and restoration defects. It integrates easily with dental imaging systems that dentists already use.
In the announcement, Owen Addison, Co-founder & Chief Medical Officer at BeCertain, said:
BeCertain is about making dentistry work better for both clinicians and patients by using regulated, trustworthy AI to give clinicians confidence, consistency, and more time for patient care.
BeCertain is building the trust layer for dental AI, with technology trained on NHS-grade data that brings accuracy and consistency to every diagnosis.
The bigger picture
BeCertain is another example of clinical research being converted into a commercial product with investor backing. The combination of NIHR development funding, university spinout support and a venture investor lead reflects the layered funding route many UK healthtech startups follow: public-sector grants to de-risk early development, university commercialisation support to form a company, and venture capital to scale product development and market entry.
The deal also underscores investor appetite for clinically-oriented AI that emphasises explainability and integration with existing workflows, rather than autonomous decision making. For dental practices and NHS commissioners watching clinical AI closely, the question will be how these tools perform in real-world clinical pathways and how regulatory and procurement frameworks adapt to them.
This funding round adds to momentum in the UK healthtech ecosystem for translating academic AI research into commercially viable, clinically focused products — a trend likely to continue as investors and public funders prioritise trust, data governance and demonstrable clinical value.
They've invested in BeCertain
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