Fertility startup Inito wants to use AI-designed antibodies to expand at-home health tests

Fertility startup Inito has raised $29 million in Series B funding to scale its at-home health diagnostics platform and use AI-designed antibodies to unlock new kinds of at-home tests. 

When the company launched its first fertility monitor in 2021, its goal was to make quantitative fertility hormone testing possible at home. 

While standard at-home ovulation tests predict fertile days by tracking estrogen and Luteinizing hormone (LH), they don’t measure the hormone that confirms your ovulation, which is progesterone metabolite PdG. Inito allows women to measure estrogen, LH, progesterone (PdG), and FSH on a single test strip. Inito’s AI models interpret these levels to reveal fertility hormone patterns, track fertile days, and confirm ovulation.

Fast forward to today, the startup has become a popular option for women looking to track fertility hormones, analyzing more than 30 million fertility hormone data points since 2021.

The startup is now doubling down on its belief that healthcare should start at home, and is working to evolve Inito from a fertility tracker into a broader hormone and at-home health diagnostics platform. 

Inito is using the new funding to invest in and develop AI-engineered antibodies, which it says will allow for the development of new types of tests and improve the accuracy of existing ones.

For context, when you take a test at a lab or a home, antibodies are what bind to the target molecule (such as estrogen or testosterone) to produce a signal. Traditional antibodies are grown inside animals and then screened manually in the lab, which can be a slow and expensive process. Conventional antibodies also lack the sensitivity to make at-home tests for a large number of biomarkers. 

Inito says AI-designed antibodies change the game. Instead of “raising” antibodies in animals, they can be treated almost like software. 

“We predict how proteins fold in 3D, design synthetic antibodies using AI, and test millions of variants virtually before making a single one in the lab,” explained Inito co-founder and CTO Varun A Venkatesan in an email. “This produces antibodies that are far more sensitive, consistent, and stable than anything developed through traditional methods.”

For Inito, this will unlock the next generation of at-home tests. Venkatesan says the company is already using these methods in R&D and that its wet-lab is showing promising results. 

“The real vision is bigger than adding new tests,” said Inito co-founder and CEO Aayush Rai. “The endgame is to redefine diagnostics altogether. If you want to understand what’s happening inside your body at every life stage and health need, you shouldn’t be limited by clinic appointments, lab schedules, or rigid testing systems. You should be able to measure, track, and get insights about your body from home, with lab-grade confidence.”

Inito wants to expand its vision beyond a “trying to conceive” platform. Its reader and app will soon power tests for pregnancy, menopause, and broader at-home health monitoring. 

“Our long-term roadmap goes far beyond fertility,” said Rai. “We’re building toward a platform that can measure and interpret the full spectrum of hormones that shape health across a lifetime. Pregnancy progression, menopause, and broader endocrine markers like testosterone — all powered by AI antibodies and imaging that sets Inito apart today.”

The company is going to use part of the funding to scale manufacturing and grow globally to meet growing demand across the United States and new international markets. 

Inito’s latest funding round was led by Bertelsmann India Investments and Fireside Ventures. The investment brings Inito’s total funding to around $45 million. The company previously raised $6 million in funding led by Fireside Ventures and $9 million from Y Combinator, former Nurx CEO Varsha Rao, and a dozen physicians and family offices.