Founderland Awards Q4 2025 Forward Grant to GenScan AI
#ForwardGrants
Founderland is pleased to announce Mary-Brenda Akoda and GenScan AI as the recipients of the Q4 2025 Founderland Forward Grant.
The Forward Grant was created to provide timely, catalytic capital to founders building solutions with the potential for outsized impact. This quarter’s recipient reflects that mission clearly.
The challenge
MRI scans remain one of the biggest bottlenecks in modern diagnosis. Scans are often long, expensive, and physically demanding for patients, which limits how many people hospitals can scan each day. These constraints contribute to significant backlogs and delayed diagnoses, particularly for time-critical conditions such as cancer, stroke, and cardiac disease.
The solution
GenScan AI is addressing this challenge through its flagship product, GenMRI. GenMRI is a real-time generative AI software solution that reduces MRI scan times by up to 90 percent without requiring new hardware.
By shortening scan times, hospitals can increase patient throughput, reduce the need for repeat scans and sedation, and deliver diagnostic answers more quickly. The result is improved efficiency for healthcare systems and a meaningfully better experience for patients.
Why the jury selected GenScan AI
The Forward Grant jury was unanimous in its decision. Judges highlighted the rare combination of deep technical credibility, commercial viability, and clear public benefit.
Mary-Brenda has already validated the technology on thousands of scans and is now moving into clinical pilots. Her background as a Google DeepMind Scholar, former Microsoft engineer, and Imperial College London alumna further reinforced the strength of the team and the underlying science. The jury also noted the progress achieved while building the company part-time, demonstrating both execution ability and resilience.
What the grant enables
The €10,000 Forward Grant will support Mary-Brenda in transitioning to working full-time on GenScan AI. The funding will be used to advance clinical pilot readiness and protect core intellectual property at a critical stage of the company’s development.
This is exactly what the Forward Grant exists to do: deploy catalytic capital at the right moment to help founders unlock their next phase of growth.
Looking ahead
GenScan AI is now preparing for clinical pilots and the next stage of validation. We encourage the community to follow Mary-Brenda Akoda and GenScan AI as the company continues its journey.
Learn more at gencscan.ai.
About the Founderland Forward Grant
The Founderland Forward Grant provides equity-free funding to founders building ambitious, high-impact companies. Grants are designed to support critical inflection points, enabling founders to move faster and build with greater focus.