Clementine raises €1.7M Seed to deploy an AI agent inside hearing clinics

Clementine (Maastricht) has raised $2 million / €1.7 million in a Seed round led by Healthy.Capital, an Amsterdam-based early-stage HealthTech investor. The company was founded in 2024 by Vince van de Weijer and has built Matthew — an AI hearing care agent designed to be the first point of contact between people with hearing loss and the clinics that could treat them.

The product logic is a conversion problem, not a clinical one. Hearing clinics already have lead generation; what they struggle with is turning inquiries into appointments. People who think they might need a hearing test are reluctant starters: they delay, they avoid, they put the call off until a waiting list makes it easy to do nothing. Matthew answers inquiries at any hour, without judgment or waiting, addresses the practical and emotional objections that delay care, and books the appointment when the person is ready. For the clinic, it replaces missed calls with confirmed bookings. For the patient, it removes the barrier of a staffed phone line during business hours.

The market problem

An estimated 1.5 billion people have some degree of hearing loss globally. Of those who would clinically benefit from treatment, roughly 80% never seek it — a figure Clementine cites and that is broadly consistent with published epidemiological data on hearing care. The reasons are behavioural: stigma around hearing aids, the normalization of gradual loss, the friction of making an appointment and following through. A person who has been adjusting to worsening hearing for a decade does not experience the condition as urgent. The AI agent is designed to intervene in that pre-clinical window — at 2 AM when someone is searching on a phone and wondering if they should do something about it.

Vince van de Weijer: "Clinics don't need more leads; they need better conversations at the right moment. Matthew, our AI Hearing Care Agent, ensures no patient inquiry goes unanswered."

Commercial footprint and investor context

Before closing the Seed, Clementine expanded its commercial presence through a partnership with Zoolstra, a marketing agency serving hearing clinics and hearing groups across the United States and Canada. This puts the product in a live commercial context outside the Netherlands before the company has completed its first full year of operations.

Healthy.Capital — whose portfolio includes Pharmi, MS Sherpa, OpenUp, Datamonk, and Clear.bio — has a consistent investment pattern: healthcare access companies that use technology to change whether and when people engage with care. Clementine fits that frame precisely.

Douwe Jippes, managing partner at Healthy.Capital: "Clementine combines deep domain expertise with a clear AI platform strategy that can scale globally. We believe this approach will fundamentally change how people with hearing disability engage with hearing healthcare. And that's impact we like to help scale."

€1.7M is a first-check bet on a young company solving a documented access gap. The product is live, the commercial partnership is in place, and the market is large and underserved. Whether the AI agent delivers measurable, attributable conversion gains — at scale, across multiple clinic formats — is what the next 18 months answer.