Relu, a Leuven-based AI startup helping dental labs scale production through automated dental design and planning workflows, has announced a €1.51 million ($1.75 million) strategic investment from Dental Innovation Alliance (DIA).
DIA is a North Carolina-based venture capital fund investing in technologies and solutions in the dental and multi-site healthcare industry. The company plans to use this capital to strengthen its position in the US market. In March 2023, the company announced its €2 million Seed funding round, also backed by DIA.
“A lab’s growth used to be capped by how many technicians it could hire and train. AI removes that ceiling: technicians who adopt Relu become far more productive, designing multiples of the cases they could before. This investment lets us bring that to more American labs,” said Holger Willems, CEO and co-founder of Relu.
Founded in 2019 by Willems, Adriaan Van Gerven (CTO), Antoine Coppens (COO), and Thomas Beznik (CPO), Relu builds AI to make dental designs smarter, faster, and more consistent in orthodontics and implant-restorative dentistry.
It has built Relu® Automate, an AI platform that automates the design and administrative work for dental lab cases. The platform works on a pay-per-case model and automates design and workflow processes, giving labs room to grow.
The company states that every essential dental appliance, from a routine night guard to a complex crown, relies on the precise work of a dental laboratory. But a deepening shortage of skilled dental technicians is creating a bottleneck that limits how much labs can produce and how fast.
Relu claims to tackle this bottleneck directly. Its Relu® Automate platform uses AI to analyse 3D scans and automatically generate patient-specific designs, such as night guards, surgical guides, and crowns, thereby eliminating the manual CAD steps that slow technicians down. Labs process more cases faster, without compromising quality.
It offers implantologists and dental labs an AI-powered system that automatically generates a complete treatment proposal. According to the company, it combines CBCT segmentation, intraoral scan alignment, implant positioning, abutment positioning, provisional crown design, and guide design into one seamless and unified experience.
The company partners with leading dental software companies and dental labs to embed AI planning and design automation into existing clinical workflows.
Last year, in October, Relu received CE certification (under the EU MDR) for its AI automatic implant planning solution.
“We backed Relu at the seed stage, and we’re investing again because the results speak for themselves. The lab operators among our investors have seen Relu deliver: real design and workflow automation, and a growing adoption by leading American labs. We’re proud to help them scale,” said Thomas Sharpe, Managing Partner at Dental Innovation Alliance.
The company plans to use this capital to strengthen its position in the US market. Relu has offices in Leuven, Belgium, and Boston, MA, and currently handles more than 1 million cases each year from dental laboratories across 82 countries. The platform is grounded in 33 peer-reviewed publications and carries ISO 13485 certification, FDA 510(k) clearance, and CE marking.