Throne Science, the startup building an AI-powered camera that clips to your toilet to track gut health, closed a $10 million Series A led by Will Ventures. The round brings total funding to nearly $18 million since the company's 2023 founding. Co-founder John Capodilupo, who previously co-founded and served as CTO of Whoop, brings wearable-health credibility to a category that barely exists.
Emerson Collective, Workshop, LEAD VC, Salt VC, Accomplice, and Moxxie Ventures also participated. The company plans to use the capital to expand its AI capabilities and pursue clinical validation.
How Throne's toilet camera works
The device uses computer vision to analyze stool and urine, then converts that data into health metrics. CEO Scott Hickle told Crunchbase News the system runs a pipeline of twelve different computer vision models, some trained by practicing gastroenterologists.
Earlier this month, Throne launched a beta version of its Gut Health AI coach. Users can ask questions about their data and receive personalized feedback. The tool uses large language models to interview users after episodes of poor gut health, trying to identify contributing factors.
“It's a conversational AI experience very similar to speaking with a dietitian or nutritionist who might ask you about stress or changes in your diet or sleep.”
— Scott Hickle, CEO of Throne Science
Why a Whoop co-founder cares about your gut
Capodilupo has ulcerative colitis. That personal stake shapes his conviction about the product. He now serves as Throne's chief product officer.
His thesis: longitudinal data is everything. At Whoop, value came from watching the same person day after day, year after year. The same logic applies to GI health, where dense longitudinal datasets essentially do not exist.
“There's essentially no dense longitudinal dataset on human GI function, which is why so much of IBD care is still guesswork. Building one is as important to me as the product itself.”
— John Capodilupo, via email to Crunchbase News
Three revenue lines, one competitor
Throne sells directly to consumers but is exploring sales through clinicians, particularly functional-medicine practitioners. A third potential business involves academic and pharmaceutical research. Studies of digestive health often depend on patients accurately describing their own bathroom habits. Throne argues its passive system could provide researchers with more consistent, objective data.
The company competes with Kohler, which recently introduced its Dekoda toilet-mounted health tracker. Hickle pointed to usability, battery performance, and software as key differentiators.
The longer-term bet: cancer detection
Throne's stated ambition is to build an at-home system capable of spotting early warning signs of colorectal, bladder, and kidney cancers. Hickle calls it a "smoke detector for colon cancer." That capability remains under development and is not part of the current product.
Clinical validation is underway. The company was recently accepted to present an academic abstract showing its visual AI assesses stool form with accuracy on par with board-certified gastroenterologists. Validation studies with researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Chicago are also in progress.
Throne has added gastroenterologists and colorectal-cancer experts Dr. Fola May and Dr. Aasma Shaukat as medical advisers.
Logicity's Take
Throne's pitch hinges on two bets: that people will overcome the awkwardness of a toilet camera, and that passive monitoring beats self-reporting. The Whoop pedigree helps with the second. Capodilupo built a business around continuous wearable data, and the same playbook could work here. The harder question is whether the clinical-grade cancer detection roadmap will survive FDA scrutiny and whether the consumer market is large enough to sustain the company before that validation arrives. The Kohler entry signals that big players see opportunity, but a startup's speed advantage matters most if it can lock in clinical partnerships first.
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Source: Crunchbase News / Mary Ann Azevedo
Huma Shazia
Senior AI & Tech Writer
Produced with AI assistance and reviewed by the Logicity editorial team. Learn more in our Editorial Policy.
