KEY POINTS:

• Brisbane-based Laronix says its MIRA-AI feature can recreate a patient’s own voice from about 10 seconds of recorded audio, according to Startup Daily on Aug. 5, 2026.

• The feature is in pre-release testing with clinicians in Australia and the United States, with wider release planned for next year depending on fundraising, Startup Daily reported.

• The company’s product on the market is AVA Voice, a wearable artificial larynx listed on Australia’s ARTG under number 383438, according to Laronix’s website and a company release distributed by PR Newswire on Nov. 12, 2025.

• Laronix received an Australian Government Industry Growth Program grant of A$3.2 million announced Nov. 12, 2025, according to the same release, and closed a A$2 million seed round led by Scale Investors, Startup Daily reported.

• AVA Voice was priced at US$82 a month and paid out of pocket, at least initially, The Baltimore Banner reported on Dec. 2, 2024.

• Cancer Australia, drawing on Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data, estimates 5,577 new head and neck cancer cases in Australia in 2025. Laryngeal cancer is one subset of that grouping.

A Queensland medical technology company says it can now recreate the voice a cancer patient had before treatment took it away, using as little as 10 seconds of old audio, according to Startup Daily.

The feature, called MIRA-AI, is not yet on sale. Startup Daily reported on Aug. 5, 2026, that it is being tested with clinicians in Australia and at major hospitals in the United States, and that a broader release is planned for next year depending on fundraising.

The company is Laronix, which operates from Eagle Street in Brisbane and from White Plains, New York, according to a company release distributed by PR Newswire on Nov. 12, 2025. It was founded by siblings Dr. Farzaneh Ahmadi, the chief executive, and Dr. Mousa Ahmadi, the chief operating officer, the Baltimore Banner reported on Dec. 2, 2024. Advance Queensland and the engineering publication create digital both describe the company as a 2019 spin-out from Western Sydney University.

“For years we tried to generate voices for people who had lost their voice. We could give them a natural voice, but it wasn’t their voice,” Farzaneh Ahmadi told news.com.au, according to Startup Daily. “Now we can read 10 seconds of any voice-lost patient’s voice and recreate their own voice for them, the voice their families knew them for, the voice their loved ones recognised.”

Startup Daily reported the source audio can come from home recordings or social media.

What is already on the market

Laronix’s shipping product is a different thing from the voice-cloning feature.

AVA Voice is a wearable electronic artificial larynx. create digital reported on April 13, 2022, that a sensor placed over the stoma reads the user’s breathing, an AI model of the vocal folds converts those readings into sound, and a thin tube carries the sound to the mouth, where the lips and facial muscles shape it into words.

The Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre describes the device as registered Class I with both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration. Laronix’s website lists the device on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods under number 383438 and states the company is certified to ISO 13485.

Greater Baltimore Medical Center announced on Sept. 9, 2024, that it was the first certified healthcare institution globally to offer AVA Voice.

“This allows patients to think something and say something versus having to type it out,” Ana Minisci, a senior speech-language pathologist at GBMC’s Milton J. Dance Jr. Head and Neck Center, told The Baltimore Banner on Dec. 2, 2024. “And people like the way it sounds better than other devices. It’s a lot more natural.”

Laronix stated in its Nov. 12, 2025, release that AVA Voice is in use in more than 40 hospitals across Australia and the United States. The International Telegraph could not independently verify that figure.

Public money and private backing

Startup Daily reported the A$2 million seed round closed in August 2023, led by Scale Investors, with backing from Blamey Saunders hearing aid founders Dr. Elaine Saunders and Dr. Peter Blamey and Modibodi founder Kristy Chong.

The company has also drawn repeatedly on government funding. Startup Daily listed an Accelerating Commercialisation grant of $551,100 in August 2021 and an Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre grant of $409,000 in December 2022. Advance Queensland recorded a $197,500 Ignite Ideas Fund grant and a $50,000 Bionics Queensland prize, and gives the commercialisation grant figure as $551,000.

The largest is the Industry Growth Program grant of A$3.2 million announced last November.

“We are deeply grateful for the Australian government’s support through the IGP 2025, as it will enable us to accelerate the development of the Laronix MIRA Voice product line and bring this transformative solution to the market over the next two years,” Farzaneh Ahmadi said in the PR Newswire release.

Google’s Australian blog lists Laronix in the 2025 cohort of its Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First program and states the voice-cloning work uses Google’s Speech AI Instant Custom Voice technology.

The evidence, and what is missing

The published research underpinning the technology is thin. A study by Ahmadi and colleagues in PLoS ONE in February 2018 reported pre-clinical trials of a pneumatic bionic voice prosthesis, measuring voice onset and offset accuracy at 98.45% in a single laryngectomy patient.

The International Telegraph searched the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry and ClinicalTrials.gov and found no registered trial for the Laronix device. No peer-reviewed clinical outcomes study of AVA Voice or MIRA-AI was located.

Laronix’s 10-second claim is also short by industry standards. ElevenLabs, which runs a program supplying free voice clones to laryngectomy patients, states that a clone can be built from a few minutes of clear audio but that one to three hours of diverse recordings produces the most natural result.

Cancer Australia, using AIHW figures, reports 5,097 new head and neck cancer cases in Australia in 2021 and estimates 5,577 in 2025. Laryngeal cancer sits inside that grouping; neither AIHW nor Cancer Australia publishes a current standalone national count for it.