Fresh Off $4.5M Raise, This AI Startup Offers Acne Care Without Long Waits For Dermatologist Visits

Growing up with a doctor dad and dietitian mother, Luis Wenus always had health professionals in his corner. “My parents were able to help me with anything that came up related to my health,” says Wenus. “I had really bad acne growing up, and we worked through different prescription products and ingredients and were able to solve it quickly.”

It wasn’t until later that he realized his experience wasn’t universal. Seeking to provide people the unlimited access to health professionals he benefited from, Wenus began devouring research studies. The engineer, who had helped digital identity system World ID reach its first 2 million users, was particularly drawn to studies, including on skin lesion detection, by Luis Ruben Soenksen, a biomedical engineer and researcher at MIT who’s developed artificial intelligence tools to analyze skin conditions.

With Soenksen and Sean Geiger, a former senior software engineer at Apple, Wenus founded Nolla Health, an AI-driven healthcare company that offers skin cancer and acne assessments and on-demand expert-recommended treatments. It launched in Norway in November 2024 with a skin cancer screening app, succeeded by an acne treatment app in May 2025.

Nolla’s mission is simple: to put a doctor in everyone’s pocket. It’s powered by Vision Transformers or neural network models for computer vision and large multimodal models or deep learning systems trained on over 1 million cases of 1,600-plus skin conditions. Within six months of starting Nolla, it amassed over 55,000 patients, an amount equal to about 1% of the Norwegian population across both apps and flagged thousands of serious skin conditions while reducing clinician time per patient by a factor of 10.

Nolla was bootstrapped up until two months ago, when it raised a $4.5 million seed round led by General Catalyst, with participation from SNÖ Ventures and Commure founder Diede van Lamoen. After its traction in Norway and funding, Nolla is now expanding to the United States. In the U.S., it can prescribe compounded medications, which are subject to stricter regulations in Europe.

Wenus says, “We will be able to go a lot more granular here, taking specific drugs and active ingredients and getting more specific on what we give people. So, I think we can have an even better product here.”

Nolla plans to introduce additional healthcare-focused apps, but starting with dermatology was a strategic move. Currently, the acne treatment app is the only app from Nolla available in the U.S. Acne affects up to 50 million Americans annually, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. Wenus, Soenksen and Geiger recognized it as a condition compelling consumers to feel an immediate urge to find a solution.

“The most important thing when treating acne and skin conditions is to adhere to the recommended product and actually track how things work over time.”

Nolla’s acne treatment app is designed to be fast, personalized and frictionless. A facial scan takes just a few seconds, followed by a short intake form, and within two to five days, patients receive targeted treatment recommendations. All that’s required is a smartphone with a camera for the facial scan.

From there, the scan and intake form are reviewed by licensed clinicians—nurse practitioners or physicians vetted through Nolla’s internal process—who issue a personalized treatment plan. By prioritizing follow-up and regular check-ins, the app keeps patients engaged with their treatment and more likely to achieve long-term improvement. Each month, clinicians examine the entire case: analyzing new images, updated responses and progress.

“The most important thing when treating acne and skin conditions is to adhere to the recommended product and actually track how things work over time,” says Wenus. “That is one of the biggest issues we are trying to prevent—people going to their primary care doctor or getting referred to a dermatologist, often taking months to get to this point, and customers giving up on prescriptions that don’t yield immediate results.”

Behind the scenes, Nolla Health adheres to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) rules for the storage, transmission and handling of personal health data. Wenus assures patients that they can feel confident and secure that their medical history will not be public.

The service is priced at $59 per month, and it includes a free scan, monthly clinician-reviewed treatment plans, personalized compounded topical prescriptions, ongoing monitoring of skin progress and home delivery of medications from Nolla’s New Jersey facility. No insurance, referrals or long waitlists are required. In the U.S., market research resource Statista estimates patients wait an average of 36.5 days to see a dermatologist, a delay Nolla aims to eliminate.

Entering the U.S. market, Nolla will face considerable competition. Remedy Meds recently acquired Thirty Madison, parent company of Nurx, a specialist in women’s dermatology, reproductive health and sexual health care, for $500 million, and other participants in the dermatology and skincare space are Honeydew, Curology, GoodRx and Dermatica. As of March, however, there was one less competitor as Hims & Hers shuttered teledermatology service Apostrophe to focus on GLP-1s.

Nolla’s long-term goals extend beyond skin. It aims to build a trusted, AI-assisted doctor to care for patients for a wide variety of healthcare needs spanning primary care, women’s health, chronic disease management, longevity care and more.