Tech
Synex founder, once detained at the border with a 80-pound magnet, is building portable MRIs to test glucose
Back in 2019, Synex Medical founder Ben Nashman spent the night detained by US customs. Nashman tried to explain he was simply transporting materials from Buffalo to Toronto for his homemade MRI. Customs, however, took issue with the label on the package: “nuclear magnetic resonance.”
Nashman spent hours in a bright waiting room before he finally convinced them that he was really just a run-of-the-mill 18-year-old scientist with an obsession with MRI technology. They let him take his roughly 80-pound magnet and he zoomed back to Toronto. “I got back at like 3 or 4 am and got a few hours of sleep before classes,” he said.
Nashman, now 24, might have landed himself on a list of suspicious individuals, but he insists it was worth it: that one very long night was part of his years-long journey to build a portable MRI capable of testing glucose and other important molecules without the need to extract blood. Today, the company is one step closer to that goal, announcing a $21.8 million Series A fundraise, with investors like Accomplice, Radical Ventures, Fundomo and Khosla Ventures. It brings the company’s total haul up to over $36 million, with includes seed funding from Sam Altman.
Right now, Synex’s prototype is the size of a toaster, although Nashman hopes to one day have it fit in your palm. It works by first using MRI to create a 3D image of the finger to find the best spot to test. It then uses something called magnetic resonance spectroscopy to send radio pulses that “excite the different molecules,” Nashman said. The machine then takes the signals from all the molecules and filters for a specific one. Synex will start with glucose testing, but will eventually track things like amino acids, lactate and ketones.
The company introduced me to Diane Morency, a woman based in Massachusetts who has suffered from Type 2 diabetes for years. “I’ve got holes in my fingers,” she told me, adding she can no longer play her ukulele because of the pain. “It would be a godsend to not have to prick my [fingers] anymore.”
But there’s a reason non-invasive glucose testing hasn’t been commercialized: it’s difficult to track glucose accurately without drawing blood, and it’s even harder to make the device portable or affordable. “We believed that was going to be an absolute moonshot,” said Jun Jeon, an investor at Khosla Ventures focusing on healthcare.
Jeon has yet to try Nashman’s prototype but said that, if Nashman can deliver on his promises, then “this was a bet worth taking.”
An obsession with longevity
Nashman was always curious about living forever.
When he was about 16, he walked into his vet’s office armed with printed-out scientific studies. He had determined that his dog should be put on the immunosuppressive drug rapamycin, a drug controversially heralded by longevity enthusiasts. The vet had no idea what Nashman was talking about. “He was just like, ‘this is just way too experimental for me,’” Nashman recalled.
The vet’s refusal didn’t deter him. “Later, I got my parents on it and I got on it,” he laughed. “Honestly, I think everything should be on it.”
It was the first of several longevity self-experiments. Nashman briefly took diabetes drug arcarbos, forked over thousands for a Prenuvo full body scan, and, like so many in Silicon Valley before him, got his hands on a continuous glucose monitor. His health obsession coincided with a fascination with physics — particularly the “elegant” science behind MRIs, and how much they could reveal about the human body.
By 17, he had ordered materials online to make a makeshift MRI in his bedroom (it was “really crap,” he said). By 18, he had held an internship working on brain imaging at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and enrolled at the University of Toronto for engineering science. “I think I have the record for most MRIs ever, probably,” he said. “I’ve probably scanned my finger honestly 1000s of times at this point.”
He realized that MRI technology could be the ultimate longevity hack, giving him more information about his body than an Oura Ring or Whoop ever could. He first sold his dreams to Altman, whom he met in 2019, and then Peter Thiel, landing the Thiel Fellowship in 2021.
Nashman may have Silicon Valley’s overlords on his side, but he’s still entering a very crowded space with well-capitalized competition. Startups like Know Labs and Berlin-based DiaMonTech are both making their own non-invasive products. Apple has reportedly been quietly working on a non-invasive glucose monitor, and Google too once tried to make its own glucose monitoring contact lens before pausing the project in 2018.
Synex Medical faces an uphill battle from here. The company will have to undergo rigorous clinical trials to prove to the FDA that its machine can accurately isolate glucose molecules. There’s also the lingering question of whether Nashman can really get technology to a portable size. If not, “It wouldn’t be too useful,” Morency said. “It would do us no good outside of the house.”
But let’s say Nashman nails all of that. Let’s say Synex soars through its FDA-approved trials and successfully shrinks its current metal toaster down to something that fits in your palm. It will still debut in a healthcare industry that has long struggled to make new technology affordable, according to Khosla investor Jeon. “There’s not a lot of good infrastructure and reimbursement that will allow for all patients to have access to the technology,” Jeon said.
For Nashman, the chance for a longer life is worth dedicating his own life to. “I want to know exactly what my body needs. I want to know what my parents need,” he said. “A technology like this is just needed to usher in that age of predictive medicine.”
Tech
Revolut eyes valuation of up to $200B in eventual IPO
British neobank Revolut seems to be eyeing a major valuation bump when it eventually goes public. The company is targeting a market cap between $150 billion and $200 billion in an initial public offering, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous investor sources.
The fintech giant, which secured a full banking license in the United Kingdom in March after years of waiting, was most recently valued at $75 billion, up from $45 billion in 2024, in a secondary share sale that made it one of Europe’s most valuable private tech companies.
Revolut’s co-founder and CEO, Nik Storonsky, last week said that the company’s IPO was at least “two years away,” according to Bloomberg.
According to PitchBook and the Financial Times, the company is working on another secondary share sale, scheduled for the second half of 2026, that would value it at more than $100 billion.
As of November 2025, the company had raised a total of $5.89 billion, according to PitchBook. Revolut reported revenue of $6 billion in the financial year ended December 31, 2025, up from $4 billion in 2024. The company’s net profit grew to $1.7 billion, up from $1 billion in 2024, and counted 68.3 million retail customers at the end of 2025.
Revolut declined to comment.
Founded in 2015, Revolut offers a range of services spanning multi-currency accounts, payment and transfer services, crypto products, insurance, and more. The neobank has been pouring truckloads of cash into expanding its operations internationally, and recently applied for a banking license in the United States.
Besides the U.K., Revolut has a banking license in the European Union, and it operates in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Brazil, and the U.S. Revolut launched operations in India last October, is about to start operating in Colombia this year, and has received a banking license in Mexico.
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Tech
Amazon taps Sweden’s Einride for its electric big rigs
Einride is adding 75 of its electric heavy duty trucks to Amazon’s Relay freight network as part of a deal that gives the Swedish startup a toehold in the e-commerce giant’s operations. Einride will also provide charging infrastructure across five locations in the United States, under the agreement announced Tuesday.
Amazon isn’t buying or operating the electric trucks. Instead, Einride will own and manage (using its own Saga AI software) the trucks, which can be used by drivers in Amazon’s Relay freight network. Relay, launched in 2017, is an app that truck drivers can use to book hauling gigs with Amazon.
Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli, who took over as chief nearly a year ago, said working with Amazon is a powerful validation of the startup’s technology and strategic vision.
“By deploying our intelligent platform within one of the world’s most sophisticated logistics networks, we are accelerating growth, while continuing to build industry-leading operational expertise,” he said in a statement.
Einride has gained attention and investment for its two-pronged approach to freight. The company has developed and now operates a fleet of about 200 heavy-duty electric trucks for companies like Heineken, PepsiCo, and Carlsberg Sweden in Europe, North America, and the UAE. It has also developed autonomous pod-like trucks, which stand out for their cab-less design.
The agreement with Amazon doesn’t include the autonomous pods.
Einride has landed this agreement at a critical time: The startup is finalizing a merger with blank-check company Legato Merger Corp. and is expected to go public soon.
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While the agreement might not carry the same weight for Amazon, which has a market cap of $2.7 trillion, it does contribute to its low-carbon goals. Amazon has said it wants to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2040.
“This rollout is an important step forward in addressing one of the toughest challenges we face in decarbonizing our transportation network — electrifying heavy-duty trucking,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We’re excited to continue to collaborate with Einride and learn from these operations as the trucks hit the road.”
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Tech
YouTube expands its AI likeness detection technology to celebrities
YouTube is expanding its new “likeness detection” technology, which identifies AI-generated content, such as deepfakes, to people within the entertainment industry, the company announced on Tuesday.
The technology works similarly to YouTube’s existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users’ uploaded videos, allowing rights owners to request removal or share in the video’s revenue.
Likeness detection does the same, but for simulated faces. The feature is meant to help protect creators and other public figures from having their identities used without their permission — a common problem for celebrities who find their likenesses have been used in scam advertisements.
The technology was first made available to a subset of YouTube creators in a pilot program last year before expanding more broadly to include politicians, government officials, and journalists this spring.
Now YouTube says the technology is being made available to those in the entertainment industry, including talent agencies, management companies, and the celebrities they represent. The company has support from major agencies like CAA, UTA, WME, and Untitled Management, which offered feedback on the new tool.
Use of the likeness detection tool does not require entertainers to have their own YouTube channels.
Instead, the feature scans for AI-generated content to detect visual matches of an enrolled participant’s face. Users can then choose to request removal of the video for privacy policy violations, submit a copyright removal request, or do nothing. YouTube notes that it won’t remove all content, as it permits parody and satire content under its rules.
In the future, the technology will support audio as well, the company says.
Related to this, YouTube has also been advocating for similar protections at a federal level, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in Washington, D.C. This would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized re-creations of an individual’s voice and visual likeness.
The company hasn’t yet said how many removals of AI deepfakes have been managed by the tool so far, but noted in March that the amount of removals was still “very small.”
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