“Why do I have to beg my grandparents to put on their hearing aids, but no one has ever needed to ask me to put on my glasses?”
That question drove Matthew de Jonge to spend six years building Fortell, an AI hearing aid startup that recently raised $163 million from investors including Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, and Valor Equity Partners CEO Antonio Gracias. The company aims to build hearing aids that understand the sounds around you in real time, identify what matters, and turn down the rest — instead of amplifying everything at once, as most traditional hearing aids do.
In 2026, Fortell’s approach taps into the broader shift toward edge AI and real-time audio processing, where on-device machine learning can separate speech from noise without relying on cloud connectivity. This could be a game-changer in a market where five companies control 97% of hearing aid products, insurance often doesn’t cover the cost, and innovation has historically lagged.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with de Jonge to discuss what it takes to disrupt a decades-old industry — from overcoming the monopoly to designing a device people actually want to wear.
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