Techcyte, a Utah-based company building AI-powered diagnostics for pathology labs, has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Van Tuyl Companies. Existing investors Zoetis Inc. and Mayo Clinic also participated. The company was founded in 2013 by Ralph Yarro and Rick Smith through a technology transfer from the University of Utah, where Dr. Mohamed Salama had developed an early system for classifying white blood cells. Since then, Techcyte has expanded into veterinary, human health, and environmental diagnostic markets.
Pathology labs are under real pressure right now. The global digital pathology market was valued at $1.46 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $2.75 billion by 2030, growing at 13.5% per year, according to MarketsandMarkets. Behind that growth is a familiar problem: more patients, more tests, and not enough qualified pathologists to handle the workload. Rising cancer rates and the growing burden of chronic disease are pushing labs to process larger volumes while maintaining accuracy and speed.
Techcyte raised $15 million in this round. Van Tuyl Companies led the deal, with Zoetis and Mayo Clinic contributing as returning investors. The company says its veterinary business is already profitable and expects its environmental and human health segments to reach profitability within the next year.
Digital pathology is the process of scanning glass microscope slides into high-resolution digital images that can be stored, shared, and analysed using software. Add AI to that process, and labs can automate routine tasks like counting cells, classifying tissue types, and sorting cases by urgency. That frees up pathologists to focus on the cases that genuinely require their expertise.
Test volumes are climbing while the number of available specialists is not. For labs in smaller cities or lower-income settings, getting a second opinion from a subspecialist has often meant waiting days for slides to be physically transported. With a digital system, a pathologist anywhere in the world can review the same image at the same time. That shift has practical consequences for how quickly patients get results.
Techcyte's main product is called Fusion. It integrates AI analysis, digitised workflows, and connections to existing lab information systems in one environment. The design goal is to let labs adopt the platform without overhauling their current setup.
The platform covers two main areas of pathology. Anatomic pathology deals with tissue samples from biopsies and surgery. Clinical pathology covers fluids and cellular material, including blood analysis. Fusion also handles veterinary and environmental diagnostics, which broadens Techcyte's potential customer base beyond human medicine.
The funding will go toward developing the Fusion platform further and expanding it across all three of Techcyte's market segments. Reaching profitability in its human health and environmental divisions is the company's stated near-term goal.
Part of what makes this round notable is the data access it includes. Mayo Clinic is providing Techcyte with its Safe Harbor dataset, which contains more than 17 million de-identified slides and pathology reports. AI models for medical diagnostics need large volumes of high-quality training data to perform reliably. Access to a dataset of that scale, built from real clinical material, is expected to improve the performance of Techcyte's AI tools inside the Fusion platform.
"Laboratories are being asked to do more with less, while maintaining high standards for quality and rapid turnaround times," said Ben Cahoon, CEO of Techcyte. "Techcyte Fusion® directly addresses these challenges through unified AI-enabled pathology workflows. This investment allows us to continue growing the Fusion platform and extending the world-class capabilities that were built in collaboration with Mayo Clinic. We are grateful to Van Tuyl Companies for leading this round and to Mayo Clinic and Zoetis for their continued collaboration and support."
Techcyte started as a technology transfer out of the University of Utah in 2013. Ralph Yarro and Rick Smith licensed a white paper on white blood cell classification, then spent the following years building the company through a series of seed rounds and commercial partnerships.
Techcyte describes itself as the only unified anatomic and clinical pathology AI platform. Most companies in this space focus on one diagnostic area. Techcyte's approach involves partnerships with scanner manufacturers, hardware providers, and AI developers rather than building all components internally. By 2025, the company reported having analysed nearly 9 million digital scans across its platforms and was listed among the 25 fastest-growing companies in Utah.
Techcyte has raised capital in stages since its founding. A Series E round in 2021 brought in $21 million and supported the launch of a digital cytology product with Zoetis. Before that, four seed rounds between 2013 and 2018 raised just over $7 million combined. The company also received a $1 million grant after being named Luxembourg Startup of the Year in 2018.
Van Tuyl Companies, which led this latest round, is a diversified holding company active across multiple industries. Zoetis, an animal health company and Techcyte partner since 2020, joined the round as a returning investor. The two companies launched the VETSCAN IMAGYST veterinary fecal testing platform together that year. Mayo Clinic has been involved since at least 2023 and holds a financial interest in Techcyte's technology; any revenue it receives from that interest goes toward its not-for-profit mission in patient care, education, and research.
Canaccord Genuity LLC served as exclusive advisor to Techcyte on the transaction.
