aetherAI vs Modella AI (2026)
aetherAI sells clinical pathology software with regulatory approvals; Modella AI builds generative tools offered for research and education. aetherSlide is FDA cleared as an image management and viewing system (K233126), and aetherAI Hema is approved in Taiwan and CE marked for bone marrow smears. Modella's PathChat 2 is a pathology copilot for research and education; its diagnostic version, PathChat DX, holds a Breakthrough Device Designation that the company says does not imply clearance. AstraZeneca has acquired Modella and is integrating the platform into its oncology research and development.
- You need software for clinical use now, with approvals in the United States, Taiwan and Europe.
- Bone marrow smear analysis is on your list.
- You want a vendor whose platform is sold to hospitals rather than folded into a drug maker's research.
- You want a conversational copilot for pathology teaching or research.
- You work with AstraZeneca's oncology research.
- You want to evaluate generative models built on the Mahmood Lab's published research.
This comparison is published by AI Health Index, an independent research platform that compares healthcare AI vendors objectively. aetherAI and Modella AI are each graded against the same capability taxonomy, from each vendor's own public materials and the regulatory record, under the AI Health Index verification standard. No vendor pays for placement, and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Plain facts
| Fact | aetherAI | Modella AI |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | Digital Pathology AI | Digital Pathology AI |
| Founded | 2015 | 2023 |
| Headquarters | Taipei, Taiwan | Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Website | aetherai.com | modella.ai |
Side by Side
Select any grade to read the note behind it.
Each vendor in one paragraph
Written to be quoted whole. Each paragraph opens the AI Health Index profile of the vendor: what the product is, who buys it and what it does.
Taipei based digital pathology and medical imaging AI company. Its aetherSlide image management and viewing system holds FDA clearance (K233126, 2024), Taiwan approval and CE marking, and is named at hospitals in Taiwan, Japan and Germany. It also sells aetherAI Hema, bone marrow smear analysis software approved in Taiwan and CE marked, and aetherAI Endo, computer aided polyp detection for colonoscopy approved in Taiwan, plus research applications for slide quality control, cell counting and IHC quantification.
Source: AI Health Index, September 2026
Boston biomedical AI company, acquired by AstraZeneca, building generative and agentic tools for pathology. PathChat combines pathology foundation models pretrained on histology image and image text data with a custom trained multimodal large language model, and PathChat 2 is offered as a copilot for research and education that can be used from a microscope, a slide viewer or a smartphone; Judith is an agent for automating AI model development on biomedical images.
Source: AI Health Index, September 2026
Questions buyers ask
How are aetherAI and Modella AI priced and sold?
For aetherAI, the platform, the algorithm products and biopharma services are all sold through a sales contact, and nothing published describes the unit of charge for any of them.
With Modella AI, the company is venture backed and private, so there is no listing driven financial disclosure either. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 28, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How do aetherAI and Modella AI handle patient data?
In aetherAI's case, the only privacy policy covers visitors to the company website, defining the service as the website, and does not address slides, smears or colonoscopy video processed by the products. Nothing states whether aetherAI receives customer images for support or model development, what it retains, who de-identifies images, or how customers are told about model updates.
For Modella AI, the site states no retention period, deidentification practice or training use for images submitted to PathChat, though the privacy policy may address them. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 28, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
What evidence is published for aetherAI and Modella AI?
The corresponding author is at National Taiwan University Hospital, aetherAI employees are coauthors, and the paper describes the product as derived from the study rather than naming a version.
In Modella AI's case, the company links the Nature (2024) paper describing PathChat and its evaluation on pathology diagnostic questions against other multimodal models, and Nature Biotechnology work on the underlying foundation models, from the Mahmood Lab at Mass General Brigham. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 28, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Related comparisons
Other published head to head assessments involving these vendors or their closest peers. The full set for this category is on the Clinical Decision Support page.
A Breakthrough Device Designation is a development status, not an authorization, as Modella itself states. Neither publishes pricing. Rewritten 28 Sep 2026 after both records were reviewed.