Throne Science series A raises $10M for toilet-based gut tracking

Throne Science raised a $10 million Series A led by Will Ventures to build and sell an AI-powered toilet camera for gut health and hydration tracking. The Throne Science series A brings the 2023 startup’s total funding to nearly $18 million, though the company did not disclose its valuation, revenue or growth figures.

Other backers in the round include Emerson Collective, Workshop, LEAD VC, Salt VC, Accomplice, Moxxie Ventures and several additional investors, according to Crunchbase News.

Throne was founded by CEO Scott Hickle, who previously spent nearly a decade in software product management, and John Capodilupo, a former Whoop co-founder and CTO. Capodilupo, now Throne’s chief product officer, has ulcerative colitis, which the company says gives the product mission a personal dimension.

What does Throne Science's toilet camera track?

Throne’s device uses computer vision to turn bathroom images into metrics tied to stool, urine, gut health and hydration. Hickle told Crunchbase News the system relies on a pipeline of about a dozen computer vision models, including some trained by practicing gastroenterologists, to evaluate characteristics of stool and urine.

The company also introduced a beta version of its Gut Health AI coach earlier this month. According to Hickle, the feature uses large language models to ask users about possible factors behind poor gut-health episodes, such as diet, stress and sleep, then looks for patterns as users build more journal entries over time.

That is the more defensible part of the pitch if Throne can get users to keep the device installed and sharing data. Capodilupo told Crunchbase News that longitudinal tracking was central to Whoop’s value and argued that gastrointestinal health lacks a dense dataset of repeated measurements from the same people.

Where Throne plans to sell

Throne currently sells to consumers and is also exploring clinician-led distribution, especially through functional-medicine practitioners. The company is considering academic and pharmaceutical research as another channel, arguing that passive bathroom tracking could give digestive-health studies more consistent data than patient self-reporting.

The product is entering a category that now includes Kohler, which recently launched Dekoda, a toilet-mounted health tracker. Hickle pointed to usability, battery life and software as areas where Throne expects to compete, but the company did not provide comparative performance data.

Clinical claims remain early

Throne’s longer-range ambition is to detect changes that could become early warning signals for colorectal, bladder and kidney cancers. Hickle has described the idea as a kind of smoke detector for colon cancer, but the company says that capability is still in development and is not part of the product currently being sold.

The startup says it was recently accepted to present its first academic abstract showing that its visual AI can assess stool form at a level comparable to board-certified gastroenterologists. Throne also says validation studies are underway with researchers at Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Chicago.

Throne has added medical advisers, including gastroenterologists and colorectal-cancer experts Dr. Fola May and Dr. Aasma Shaukat, as it tries to build credibility across consumer health and GI care.

Will Ventures managing partner Ben Gardner told Crunchbase News the investment reflects a broader move toward passive health tracking, citing companies such as Whoop and Oura. He said roughly 80% of consumers adopt at least one gut-health-related behavior, while continuous tracking for gut markers remains limited.

Throne plans to use the new capital for consumer education, clinical channels and research and development. Hickle said the company is not sharing hard numbers because it is competing with a much larger player in Kohler, a useful reminder that the category is still early and the claims now shift from fundraising to proof.

This story draws on original reporting from Crunchbase News.