The founding team behind CardiAQ Valve Technologies—the transcatheter mitral valve startup that Edwards Lifesciences acquired nearly a decade ago—is back with a new bet. This time, they're targeting one of cardiac surgery's most stubborn frontiers: the aortic root itself.
Veritas Aortic Solutions, spun out of the inQB8 Medical Technologies incubator in Costa Mesa in late 2025, closed a $12 million seed round in early June. The financing, led by a group of undisclosed MedTech angel investors with backing from Cedars-Sinai Intellectual Property Company and inQB8's existing backers, stands well above the $3.8 million median for U.S. seed rounds tracked by PitchBook-NVCA in recent quarters. For a device still in the investigational stage—no regulatory nod, no clinical trial enrollment announced—that's a notable vote of confidence.
Or perhaps it reflects something else: the credibility of repeat founders in a sector where technical complexity is unforgiving.
The Team That Sold to Edwards
At the helm are two names familiar to anyone who follows structural heart deals. Arshad Quadri, MD, a cardiothoracic surgeon turned entrepreneur, co-founded CardiAQ and now serves as Veritas's executive chairman. His partner, J. Brent Ratz, was president and COO at CardiAQ before taking the reins as CEO of inQB8, a venture studio that has quietly spun out a string of cardiac startups. One of those, MonarQ, was acquired by China's Peijia Medical in 2021; another, Relief Cardiovascular, wrapped its first-in-human study last year.
Quadri presented preliminary data on Veritas's lead device—the Transcatheter Valved Aortic Root Conduit, or TVARC—at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics conference in October 2024. Details from that presentation remain sparse in the public domain, but the pitch is ambitious: a single, catheter-delivered implant that can replace not just the aortic valve, but also the ascending aorta and the connections to the coronary arteries.
What TVARC Promises (and Doesn't Yet Deliver)
The device integrates three components: a bioprosthetic aortic valve, an ascending aortic graft, and what Veritas calls "Chameleon Eye" coronary perfusion ports. Delivered transfemorally—up through the leg, as with standard TAVR procedures—it's designed to seal off diseased sections of the aortic root while preserving blood flow to the heart muscle.
The target conditions are serious, high-mortality events: Type A ascending aortic dissections, intramural hematomas, penetrating atherosclerotic ulcers, ascending aortic aneurysms. All currently demand open-heart surgery, often under emergency conditions. A transcatheter option, if it works, would be transformative. But that's a big if.
As of late May 2026, Veritas listed between two and ten employees on LinkedIn. The company's website notes that the TVARC is investigational and not commercially available. No clinical trial registration appeared on ClinicalTrials.gov as of the funding announcement. First-in-human studies are planned, the company says, but timelines remain unspecified.
New Faces, Familiar Dynamics
The seed round brought three board members aboard. Chad Martinson, a former Medtronic CoreValve executive who later led ACOVA Integrated Health, joins alongside Judd Nordquist, CEO of Ibis Scientific, and Nirdesh Gupta, PhD, managing partner at Cedars-Sinai Intellectual Property Company. Gupta was named to that role in August 2024, overseeing the hospital system's venture-building and investment arm—a position that increasingly blurs the line between academic medicine and commercial dealmaking.
It's a board that suggests strategic optionality: regulatory expertise, clinical connections, and ties to a major health system. Whether that's enough to navigate the FDA's notoriously cautious approach to novel cardiac implants is another question.
A Crowded, Lucrative Space
Veritas enters a market in motion. Endospan won FDA approval this past April for its NEXUS Aortic Arch Stent Graft System, a device targeting adjacent anatomy. Gore's ARISE II pivotal trial for an ascending stent graft began enrolling patients in late 2023. The broader transcatheter aortic valve replacement sector continues its upward march: Edwards Lifesciences posted over $6 billion in revenue last year, with TAVR sales alone accounting for roughly $1.16 billion in the fourth quarter.
But ascending aortic and root pathology remains stubbornly surgical. Dissections and aneurysms in that territory are complex, anatomically variable, and carry steep mortality rates even with the best surgical teams. A single-implant, catheter-based solution would rewrite treatment protocols—if it can prove safe and effective in the real world.
Veritas is betting that its integrated design, combined with the CardiAQ team's track record, can unlock a category that others have struggled to crack. Whether the $12 million seed round proves sufficient to reach pivotal trials—and whether the device performs as promised in human patients—remains to be seen.
For now, it's a reunion tour with high stakes and higher technical risk. The kind of bet that makes sense only if you've already done it once before.
