New Lantern Raises $19M To Help Radiologists Get Their Time Back

When Shiva Suri shared a home office with his radiologist mother during the pandemic, he wasn’t just witnessing a routine workday — he was uncovering an industry-wide challenge. He watched as she spent the majority of her shifts mired in tedious tasks, from drawing measurements on scans to generating reports. “Only 5% of her time, she had her radiology thinking cap on,” Suri recalled. “That was really sad.”

Suri, a former engineer at big data analytics company Confluent, saw an opportunity to eliminate these inefficiencies. With his background in technology and his firsthand understanding of the problem, he founded New Lantern, a company aiming to automate radiologists’ most mundane tasks and give them back the time to focus on what matters most: analyzing scans and making critical decisions for patients.

Radiologists rely on two main tools: PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems), which stores and displays medical images, and reporting software, where diagnoses are documented. Yet these systems, often outdated and disjointed, require constant switching between platforms, further compounding inefficiency.

Suri’s solution was simple yet transformative: integrate these tools into a single cloud-native platform. By leveraging AI, New Lantern automates 25% of radiology workflows today, including tasks like 3D measurements and report generation. Over time, Suri envisions the platform evolving into an “AI radiology resident” capable of handling up to 90% of workflows.

“Radiologists waste eight hours per shift hand-drawing measurements, dictating reports, and following up on phone calls,” Suri explained. “With AI, we can give radiologists back hours in their day to focus on the most critical parts of the job.”

On Wednesday, New Lantern announced a $19 million Series A funding round led by Benchmark, a firm known for backing transformative startups. Benchmark General Partner Eric Vishria, who has previously invested in companies like Confluent and Cerebras, is joining New Lantern’s board.

Vishria, who has evaluated numerous AI-powered radiology startups, said most focus on analyzing medical images. “The technology isn’t really ready to replace human radiologists,” he noted. But Suri’s approach, which uses AI to remove the drudgery of the job rather than replace it, stood out.

“I’ve seen countless startups working on AI-powered radiology, but most focus on image analysis,” Vishria said. “Shiva was the first entrepreneur I met who figured out a much better approach is to use AI to replace the drudgery of the job, like making measurements in 3D and writing reports, so radiologists can focus on what they’re great at—reading scans.”

The funding round also included participation from Afore Capital, Anthology Fund, Neo, SV Angel, and several high-profile individuals such as Guillermo Rauch and Jay Kreps.

New Lantern’s ambition is to be the biggest leap forward in radiology since the transition from physical film to PACS 25 years ago. By moving radiology workflows to the cloud and integrating AI into daily tasks, the company aims to modernize an industry that has long been underserved by technology.

Today, most PACS systems, dominated by players like GE Healthcare and Philips, are still hosted on-premises. Meanwhile, reporting software remains the domain of Microsoft’s Nuance. Competitors like Rad AI, backed by Khosla Ventures, are making strides in AI-first solutions, but New Lantern is carving its own path with a fully integrated, cloud-native platform.

“Our goal isn’t just to improve efficiency — it’s to fundamentally reshape how radiologists work,” Suri said.

Although still in its early stages, New Lantern is already being adopted by select radiology practices. While Suri declined to disclose specific customers, he shared that the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Radiologists using the platform report completing twice as many cases in the same amount of time.

“Twenty-five years ago, we made the switch from [physical] film to PACS,” Suri said. “We want to be the biggest evolution of the market since PACS was invented.”

The new funding will support further research and development, as well as expanding the company’s engineering and sales teams. New Lantern is actively hiring software engineers as it accelerates its growth trajectory.

For years, the narrative around AI in radiology has been centered on replacing human professionals, a prediction famously spurred by AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton. Yet the reality has played out differently: there’s a growing shortage of radiologists, not a surplus.

“Thanks in part to Geoff Hinton’s comments years ago, countless companies have chased the idea that AI should replace radiologists,” Vishria remarked. “But the real opportunity is in enhancing their capabilities, not replacing them.”

New Lantern’s cloud-native platform isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about empowering radiologists to focus on the art and science of their work. With a visionary like Suri at the helm and strong backing from Benchmark, the company is poised to redefine the future of radiology — one scan at a time.

“This is still early days,” Suri said. “But with advancements in AI, we can give radiologists back hours in their day to focus on the most critical parts of the job. That’s the future we’re building toward.”