Synex founder, once detained at the border with an 80-pound magnet, is building portable MRIs to test glucose
Back in 2019, Synex Medical founder Ben Nashman spent the night detained by U.S. customs. Nashman tried to explain he was simply transporting materials from Buffalo to Toronto for his homemade MRI. Customs, however, took issue with the label on the package: “nuclear magnetic resonance.”
Nashman spent hours in a bright waiting room before he finally convinced them that he was really just a run-of-the-mill 18-year-old scientist with an obsession with MRI technology. They let him take his roughly 80-pound magnet, and he zoomed back to Toronto. “I got back at like 3 or 4 a.m. and got a few hours of sleep before classes,” he said.
Nashman, now 24, might have landed himself on a list of suspicious individuals, but he insists it was worth it: That one very long night was part of his years-long journey to build a portable MRI capable of testing glucose and other important molecules without the need to extract blood. Today, the company is one step closer to that goal, announcing a $21.8 million Series A fundraise, with investors like Accomplice, Radical Ventures, Fundomo, and Khosla Ventures. It brings the company’s total haul up to over $36 million, which includes seed funding from Sam Altman.
Right now, Synex’s prototype is the size of a toaster, although Nashman hopes to one day have it fit in your palm. It works by first using MRI to create a 3D image of the finger to find the best spot to test. It then uses something called magnetic resonance spectroscopy to send radio pulses that “excite the different molecules,” Nashman said. The machine then takes the signals from all the molecules and filters for a specific one. Synex will start with glucose testing, but will eventually track things like amino acids, lactate, and ketones.
