Company leader
Ophir Tanz
Co-founder and CEO
Pearl
Ophir Tanz is the co-founder and chief executive of Pearl, a dental AI company whose Second Opinion software was the first AI cleared by the FDA to read dental X-rays.
Computer Vision and GumGum
His interest in AI began in college, and he was drawn to computer vision, the field that teaches computers to understand images. In 2007 he co-founded GumGum, a company that applied computer vision to digital advertising and later to sports sponsorship, and grew it into a large business.
A Return to the Dental Office
His father was a dentist, and he spent time in the practice as a boy. "my father was a dentist, and I grew up helping out at his practice, so transitioning to focus on the dental industry was a little bit of a homecoming for me." As GumGum looked for other uses of its technology, he settled on dental radiology, where large numbers of X-rays are taken and findings vary from dentist to dentist.
GumGum started a dental division, and in 2019 he spun it out as Pearl. Cambron Carter, a GumGum colleague, became chief technology officer, and Dr. Kyle Stanley, a practicing dentist, joined as co-founder and chief clinical officer. "I strongly believe computer vision and AI will transform dentistry and global healthcare, and I wanted to be able to give the attention to the project that I feel it deserves."
FDA Clearance and Growth
In March 2022 the FDA cleared Second Opinion to detect conditions such as decay, calculus and root abscesses on dental X-rays, after four clinical studies with more than 80 dentists and radiologists. "It's really a first of its kind for dentistry", he said at the time.
He has held that the dentist stays in charge of the diagnosis. "We are highlighting areas of interest, we're providing recommendations, but it's up to the doctors to check things clinically and make a final call," he said in 2024. Pearl has since added 3D scan reading, insurance tools and ambient voice notes.