In 2019, Senex Medical founder Ben Nachman spent the night detained by U.S. Customs. Nachman tried to explain that he was simply transporting materials from Buffalo to Toronto for his own MRIs. But Customs objected to the label on the package: “Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.”
Nachman spent hours in a dimly lit waiting room before finally convincing them that he was just a regular 18-year-old scientist obsessed with MRI technology. They let him take his 80-pound magnet and rush back to Toronto. “I got back around 3 or 4 in the morning and got a few hours of sleep before class,” he said.
Nashman, now 24, may have landed himself on a list of suspicious individuals, but he insists it was worth it: That very long night was part of his years-long journey to build a portable MRI scanner that could test for glucose and other important molecules without the need for blood. Today, the company is one step closer to that goal, announcing a $21.8 million Series A round of funding from investors including Accomplice, Radical Ventures, Fundomo, and Khosla Ventures. That brings the company’s total raised to more than $36 million, including the seed funding from Sam Altman.
Synex’s prototype is currently about the size of a toaster, though Nachman hopes it will one day fit in the palm of your hand. The device first uses MRI to create a 3D image of the finger to find the best spot for testing. It then uses what’s called magnetic resonance spectroscopy to send out radio pulses that “excite different molecules,” Nachman said. The device then takes the signals from all the molecules and filters them down to a specific molecule. Synex will start by testing glucose, but it will eventually track things like amino acids, lactate, and ketones.
The company introduced me to Diane Morency, a Massachusetts woman who has had Type 2 diabetes for years. “I have holes in my fingers,” she told me, adding that she can no longer play the oud because of the pain. “It would be a great relief if I didn’t have to prick my fingers anymore.”
But there’s a reason noninvasive glucose testing hasn’t been commercialized: It’s hard to accurately track glucose without drawing blood, and it’s even harder to make the device portable or affordable. “We thought this would be a breakthrough,” said John Jeon, an investor at healthcare-focused Khosla Ventures.
John has yet to try Nachman’s prototype, but he said that if Nachman can deliver on his promises, “it’s a bet worth taking.”
Obsession with longevity
Nashman was always curious about living forever.
When he was 16, he walked into the vet’s office with printed scientific studies. He had decided to prescribe his dog the immunosuppressant rapamycin, a drug that had sparked widespread controversy among longevity enthusiasts. The vet didn’t know what Nachman was talking about. “He said, ‘This is just too experimental for me,’” Nachman recalls.
But the vet’s refusal didn’t deter him. “Later, I asked my parents to take the medicine, and I decided to take it,” he said with a laugh. “Honestly, I think everything should be on medicine.”
This was the first of several self-administered life-extension experiments. Nachman briefly took the drug Arcarbose to treat diabetes, paying thousands of dollars for it. Full body scan using PrenuvoLike many in Silicon Valley before him, he got Continuous glucose monitorHis obsession with health coincided with his passion for physics – especially the “elegant” science behind MRI, and what it can reveal about the human body.
By 17, he had ordered materials online to build an MRI machine in his bedroom (he said it was “really crappy.”) By 18, he had landed an internship in brain imaging at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and enrolled at the University of Toronto to study engineering. “I think I’ve set the record for the most MRIs ever, maybe,” he said. “I’ve probably scanned my finger honestly a thousand times by now.”
He realized that MRI technology might be the ultimate means of extending life, providing him with more information about his body than the Oura ring or the Hoop. He sold his dreams first to Altman, whom he met in 2019, and then to Peter Thiel, and was awarded the Thiel Fellowship in 2021.
Nachman may be backed by Silicon Valley royalty, but he’s still entering a very crowded field with stiff competition: Startups like Know Labs and Berlin-based DiaMonTech are making their own non-invasive products. He is said to have been working quietly on Non-invasive glucose monitoring device Google has also tried to make its own glucose monitoring contact lenses before. Project discontinued in 2018.
Senex Medical faces an uphill battle here. The company must undergo rigorous clinical trials to prove to the FDA that its device can accurately isolate glucose molecules. There’s also the question of whether Nashman can truly scale the technology to a portable size. If not, “it’s not going to be very useful,” Morency says. “It’s not going to be useful outside the home.”
But let’s assume Nashman pulls off all that. Let’s assume Synnex passes FDA-approved trials and succeeds in shrinking a current metal toaster to a size that fits in the palm of your hand. Still, the company would be making its debut in a health-care industry that has long struggled to make new technology accessible to everyone, according to Joon, Khosla’s investor. “There’s not a lot of good infrastructure and reimbursement that’s going to allow all patients to have access to the technology,” Joon said.
For Nachman, the chance to live longer is worth his life. “I want to know exactly what my body needs,” he says. “I want to know what my parents need. Technology like this is just what’s needed to usher in the era of predictive medicine.”
