MaxQ Medical is building around a difficult compromise in prostate care: treating disease effectively while reducing the complications that can follow intervention. The Sunnyvale company is developing a fully automated system that combines prostate imaging and targeted ultrasound therapy in a single transurethral procedure, giving urologists a way to see the tissue they intend to treat and deliver therapy from inside the prostate. Its first target is benign prostatic hyperplasia, with prostate cancer applications planned later.
The company has raised $31.5 million in Series A funding, led by Atlantic Blue Ventures, S3 Ventures and Olympus Innovation Ventures, with continued participation from Hillside Capital. The financing will expand MaxQ’s team and support clinical evaluations already underway as the company moves its investigational platform closer to potential clinical use.
MaxQ is led by CEO Amir Tehrani and executive chairman Amir Abolfathi, while its scientific roots extend to decades of Stanford ultrasound research. The company is the first spinout from Orchard Ultrasound Innovation, whose work builds on semiconductor ultrasound technology pioneered by Professor Pierre Khuri-Yakub, Stanford Professor Emeritus and inventor of the Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer.
The technology brings imaging and treatment into the same procedure. MaxQ’s system is designed to provide visibility throughout the prostate before delivering tissue-selective high-intensity focused ultrasound. Working through the urethra is intended to avoid some anatomical limitations of therapies delivered from outside the prostate while preserving the urethra and reducing injury to surrounding tissue. Those benefits remain design goals under clinical evaluation rather than established commercial outcomes.
BPH is only the starting point. MaxQ plans to extend the platform toward focal prostate cancer therapy and, longer term, diagnostics including biopsy and tumor mapping. That makes the Series A more than funding for a single procedure. MaxQ is testing whether one imaging-and-therapy architecture can eventually support a broader prostate-care pathway, where physicians can see, target and potentially diagnose disease through the same underlying platform.
