Funding profile · Breast cancer imaging

NearWave

A Notre Dame device spinout that has raised little equity, won a lot of prize money, and filed no Form D. The public totals disagree by a factor of five.

$1.2MPre-seed round closed, company-reported
$1.5MOutside investment to date, Notre Dame, Nov 2023
$210KNon-dilutive prize money across four competitions
0Form D filings on record with the SEC

Data as of September 22, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
2020 McCloskey New Venture Competition $50,000 Notre Dame IDEA Center Independent
2020 Elevate Nexus, regional pre-seed $20,000 Elevate Ventures Company
Sep 2021 Elevate Nexus Statewide Pitch $40,000 Elevate Ventures Elevate release
Jan 2022 Arizona State pitch prize, non-dilutive $100,000 Arizona State University University
Mar 2022 Y Combinator, Winter 2022 batch Not disclosed Y Combinator University
By Jul 2023 Pre-seed, closed $1.2M FlyWheel Fund; Cancer Fund Impact Investments; others unnamed Company
Nov 2023 Cumulative outside investment, seed open $1.5M Not itemized University
2024 to 2025 Accelerators Not disclosed Creative Destruction Lab; Tampa Bay Wave; Texas Medical Center; Health Wildcatters Independent
To Jul 2026 Cumulative, database estimates $2.4M PitchBook; $520K CB Insights 15 investors (PitchBook) Estimates disagree

What the filings show

SEC EDGAR · no Form D on record

Company search
No matching companies for NearWave or Near Wave
Full text search
Zero documents, all form types
Exemption
None on file. A Regulation D offering requires a Form D within 15 days of first sale

Federal grant record · NIH RePORTER and SBIR

Awards to NearWave
None at NIH, NSF or SBIR
Related award
R01EB029595, deep tissue quantitative optical imaging
Recipient
University of Notre Dame · PI Thomas D. O’Sullivan, co-founder
Amount
$1,877,447 across FY2021 to FY2024 · NIBIB

Reading the filings

  1. No Form D is not the same as no money.EDGAR returns nothing for this issuer, by name or in full text. Issuers selling under Section 4(a)(2) file no federal notice, and a YC deal plus a small syndicate fits that shape. The equity terms are not public; that is all the gap proves.
  2. The public totals are off by a factor of five.CB Insights carries $520,000 and Tracxn $500,000, each about one YC check. PitchBook carries $2.4 million. The company reports a closed $1.2 million pre-seed, and Notre Dame reported $1.5 million of outside investment in November 2023. The $1.2 million plus $210,000 of prize money is $1.41 million, near the university figure and nowhere near PitchBook.
  3. Prize money is doing real work.Four competitions account for $210,000: $50,000 at McCloskey in 2020, $20,000 then $40,000 from Elevate Nexus, $100,000 from Arizona State in early 2022. Against $1.5 million that is about 14 percent of capital, with no dilution and no board seat.
  4. Since 2024 the cadence is accelerators, not rounds.Tampa Bay Wave in mid 2024, the Texas Medical Center cohort in January 2025, Health Wildcatters in September 2025. PitchBook records the latest dated event as an accelerator, September 4, 2025: small checks and validation while a priced round stays out of reach.
  5. The granted patents belong to the university.US 12,004,843 B2 and EP 3,773,204 B1 are assigned to the University of Notre Dame, priority April 2018. The only filing in the company’s name is WO 2023/230071 A1, published November 30, 2023. The foundational claims are not on the company’s books.
  6. The databases disagree on who founded this.Tracxn names one founder, Alyssa Chong. Y Combinator, Notre Dame and the company all name Roy Stillwell and Thomas O’Sullivan; Chong is a co-author on the 2021 Biomedical Optics Express paper. Treat aggregator fields as unverified.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Regulatory No FDA clearance, PMA or listing found. Labeled an investigational device for research use only. Public record
Revenue Four systems sold for $123,000 as of the Y Combinator launch post. No later figure found. Company-stated
Customers Research groups in oncology, women’s health and optics, per Notre Dame in November 2023. None named. University
Clinical NCT06744465, 15 patient pilot at Indiana University since Mar 2025, completion estimated Jan 2027. Endpoints are data quality, not accuracy. Public record
Location South Bend, Indiana in PitchBook and CB Insights; Austin, Texas in the 2025 Health Wildcatters listing. Sources disagree

What to watch

  • A first Form D, which would put round size, investor count and officers on the record.
  • A priced seed or Series A. The last dated event on file is an accelerator, September 2025.
  • An FDA submission surfacing in the 510(k) or De Novo database.
  • The Indiana University pilot readout, estimated January 2027.
  • Terms of any Notre Dame license for the granted US and European patents.

The NearWave story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

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Sources

  1. Public recordSEC EDGAR company and full text search for NearWaveSEC · Sep 22, 2026
  2. Public recordNIH RePORTER grant R01EB029595NIBIB · FY2021 to FY2024
  3. Public recordFDA device databasesopenFDA
  4. Public recordClinicalTrials.gov NCT06744465First posted Dec 20, 2024
  5. Public recordUS 12,004,843 B2, EP 3,773,204 B1, WO 2023/230071 A1USPTO, EPO, WIPO
  6. IndependentElevate Ventures invests $320,000 after a statewide pitch competitionElevate Ventures · Sep 2021
  7. Independent11 Startups Join Health Wildcatters in DallasDallas Innovates · Sep 8, 2025
  8. University newsO’Sullivan takes first in the 2023 Commercialization AwardsNotre Dame IDEA Center
  9. DatabaseNearWave company profilesPitchBook, CB Insights, Tracxn
  10. CompanyNearWave news page and Y Combinator launch postnearwave.co and Y Combinator

Compiled from SEC, NIH, FDA and patent office records and published reports as of September 22, 2026. No Form D has been filed by this issuer, so company-reported amounts are not verified against a filing. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in NearWave. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.