In a country where nearly 10 million people live with treatable yet often undiagnosed eye diseases, a Berlin-based startup is reimagining how preventive eye care should work. Skleo Health is on a mission to eliminate preventable blindness by making eye screenings widely accessible, whether you’re at your local optician, pharmacy, or even in your office.
What’s more, Skleo Health’s AI-powered screenings are designed not only to detect eye diseases but also to identify early signs of systemic conditions, such as hypertension and diabetes, leveraging the eye as a “window into the body” and expanding the impact of their technology beyond ophthalmology.
Now, the company has secured €3 million in a seed funding round led by Sanoptis, a major player in European eye care, and joined by Antler, one of the continent’s most active early-stage investors. Several angel investors with deep expertise in health and technology also participated. The funds will support an ambitious expansion plan: reaching 30,000 monthly screenings through a growing network of partners and advancing the company’s diagnostic capabilities. A portion of this funding is dedicated to further refining Skleo’s in-house diagnostic technology and ensuring compliance with the latest CE medical device certifications, a crucial step for scaling within Europe’s highly regulated healthcare landscape.
Since its launch in March 2024, Skleo Health has expanded into the 50 largest cities in Germany, already screening more than 11,000 people. More importantly, the company has flagged over 3,000 cases with clinically relevant findings, individuals who might not have otherwise seen a specialist until the damage was irreversible.
The recent funding will also fuel the next stage of product development. A portion of the investment is earmarked for further refining Skleo’s in-house diagnostic technology, ensuring that their screening system continues to meet and exceed medical standards as it scales.
Talking to TFN, Skleo Health said: “Our primary objective over the next 18 months is to execute a focused and rapid nationwide expansion across Germany. Backed by our recent funding round, we are building on three strategic pillars that will shape Skleo Health’s long-term growth and market leadership.”
A new vision for eye care
Preventive healthcare often takes a backseat in people’s lives, not because they don’t care, but because accessing specialist care can be time-consuming, expensive, and inconvenient. Skleo Health flips that model by integrating rapid, medically-backed eye screenings into everyday spaces. In just six minutes, individuals can undergo a non-invasive scan, the results of which are then double-checked: first by a certified software system and then by a specialist eye doctor to ensure clinical accuracy. This “human + AI” validation process is a cornerstone of Skleo’s commitment to medical accuracy and trust.
This two-step process is designed to strike a balance between speed and reliability, enabling early detection of common yet serious conditions such as glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and macular degeneration. These diseases often go unnoticed until it’s too late, especially in Germany, where the average wait time for a specialist is 56 days. This delay is crucial, as data suggests that over 31% of patients are treated too late to prevent irreversible damage. Skleo’s decentralised model directly addresses this systemic issue, aiming to reverse the trend of late diagnosis and improve patient outcomes.
A triple win for the entire healthcare ecosystem
As per the company, “Skleo Health brings AI-supported, medically validated eye screenings directly into everyday locations such as pharmacies, opticians, retail stores, and corporate offices. These hubs are easy to access, quick to use, and require no prior appointment.” The company’s approach is also a response to the growing demand for digital health solutions, with AI-focused startups now capturing over 60% of all digital health venture funding in 2025, reflecting investor confidence in AI-driven clinical care.
It is touted to be a triple win for the entire healthcare ecosystem:
- For patients: They get easy, convenient access to early detection, providing peace of mind or a direct path to treatment
- For doctors: Specialists receive pre-screened, medically validated findings, allowing them to focus their valuable time and expertise on treatment
- For the healthcare system: We reduce the burden on overloaded clinics and aim to lower long-term costs by catching diseases early, making the system more efficient and proactive. Healthy individuals stay out of the system, while those with abnormalities are seamlessly guided into appropriate care pathways
How was the idea born?
Detailing about the founding team, the company stated: “The team combines deep medical and business expertise: Dr. Steffen E. Künzel is an ophthalmologist and researcher, formerly with Charité University Hospital. Fabien Vogl is an engineer with an MBA and a background in healthcare and digitisation at Air Liquide. Dr. Alex Hein is a mathematician and economist, formerly a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).”
The trio met during an Antler founder residency in Berlin in late 2023, united by a shared goal: to fix the broken pathways that often stand between patients and timely diagnosis. The motivation was both, starting with a deeply personal one. Co-founder Künzel is a practising ophthalmologist who repeatedly witnessed the often tragic consequences of late-stage diagnosis for diseases that are easily treatable when caught early. A systemic market failure in Germany validates this personal experience. They founded the company to solve this critical access problem.
Scaling with strategic support
Skleo Health’s medical model is grounded in academic credibility and innovation. The company is advised by experts from top global institutions like Charité University Clinic in Berlin, University College London, and Yale University. These affiliations help ensure the platform adheres to the highest standards of care while remaining agile enough to serve a broader population.
Partnerships have also played a key role in the growth strategy. Skleo Health has teamed up with optical chain Mister Spex, as well as a wide network of pharmacies and corporate health programs. A major collaboration with one of Germany’s largest retail groups is expected to launch soon, promising even more avenues for accessible screenings.
This decentralised model doesn’t just benefit patients. By enabling faster diagnoses at the point of need, the company frees up valuable specialist time for treating rather than diagnosing. It’s a win for the broader healthcare system, as it reduces wait times, cuts downstream treatment costs, and enables better patient outcomes.
One of the most promising aspects of Skleo Health’s approach is its platform-first mindset. Beyond the screening process itself, the company is building an open, national platform to connect patients directly with eye specialists. This seamless pipeline, from screening to diagnosis to specialist care, is what sets it apart from traditional clinics and even digital health providers.
What sets Skleo Health apart?
As per Skleo Health, “Our approach is unique because we are not just a technology provider; we are building an end-to-end system for accessible preventive care.” The company added, “What sets Skleo Health apart is not just the technology itself, but how we’ve reimagined the delivery of preventive eye care. Today, screenings for serious eye diseases are typically conducted in ophthalmology clinics. This model is inefficient: it consumes valuable specialist time for routine tasks and forces patients to wait months, often delaying diagnoses that could have prevented irreversible vision loss.”
It is built on three core pillars that differentiate us from others in the market:
- Radical accessibility: It establishes screening hubs in everyday locations, such as opticians, pharmacies, retail stores, and corporate offices. This creates a low-threshold, affordable, and accessible entry point to preventive care for everyone, without the need for a prior doctor’s appointment. This low-threshold access model helps them reach broad, underserved populations that are typically missed by traditional care structures
- Medical accuracy through “Human + AI” validation: It utilises advanced, CE-certified medical AI to analyse the screening data. However, what truly sets it apart is that every single screening is subsequently reviewed and validated by a licensed ophthalmologist on the platform. This two-step process ensures the highest level of medical accuracy and trust
- A seamless patient journey: Skleo don’t just screen, but guides. The platform is an end-to-end solution that connects patients with abnormal findings directly to a network of specialist doctors for follow-up and treatment. It manages the entire journey, from initial screening to specialist care, creating a seamless and supportive experience for the patient
Dr. Volker Wendel, Founder and CEO of Sanoptis, commented, “At Sanoptis, our mission is to make excellent eye care accessible to everyone – and we see Skleo Health as a key driver in transforming how preventive care is delivered across Europe. Skleo’s approach, which combines medical expertise with cutting-edge AI and an easily accessible screening infrastructure, is shaping the future of eye care. By identifying diseases earlier and being closer to the patient, they are tackling one of the biggest challenges in ophthalmology today: late diagnosis. We are proud to bring our clinical network and expertise to this partnership, and confident that Skleo’s model represents a new era in proactive, patient-centred eye care.”
Alan Poensgen, Partner at Antler, stated, “Skleo Health will radically improve eyecare in Germany and across Europe. The precision and speed with which Skleo Health has built an offering that addresses the exact problems facing patients and doctors only comes from firsthand experience. The founding team combines Steffen’s medical expertise with the technical and business experience of Fabien and Alex. They know their market, they have built a solution, and they are now executing and scaling to deliver their vision. It’s been a pleasure working with the founders from day zero, and I have every confidence in their future success.”
