Mosqitter expands its AI-powered mosquito surveillance network

Mosquitoes and the diseases they carry are expanding into new territory, as rising temperatures, shifting rainfall, and global travel reshape where disease-carrying mosquitoes can thrive, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dengue cases more than doubled in a year, from 6.5 million reported globally in 2023 to a record 14.6 million in 2024, the WHO says.

Mosqitter, a 30-person, Pennsylvania-based startup, thinks fighting that problem takes more than killing mosquitoes. It started with chemical-free devices that lure and trap female mosquitoes — the only ones that bite — by mimicking the heat, scent, and breathing cues of humans; females lay eggs on a roughly three-week cycle, typically 100 to 200 at a time. Mosqitter now has more than 5,000 devices operating across five continents, up from just over 250 when TechCrunch last covered the company in 2022, and wants to turn its traps into an AI-powered monitoring network that identifies mosquito species, tracks population changes, and gives earlier warning of emerging disease risk.

Co-founder and CEO Anastasiia Romanova told TechCrunch the company’s computer-vision system runs an image of a caught mosquito through its neural network, checks the result against external datasets, and has entomologists validate the findings before assigning a confidence score. “You can think about it as three judges analyzing a case and producing a verdict,” she said. Mosqitter also feeds weather, wind, and humidity data into the system, and plans to use that data to forecast population and disease-risk changes as it accumulates more of it.

The company’s product line centers on two devices: Grand, built for larger areas and public spaces, at $1,999; and Mini, for residential use and portable monitoring, at $199. Next month Mosqitter plans to launch its Febris Monitoring System, adding a data layer that tracks mosquito populations and potential disease spread for institutional customers — governments, public-health and mosquito-control agencies, airports, municipalities, and universities. Romanova emphasized that Febris does not diagnose disease; it can only indicate that a disease-carrying species is present, pointing to elevated risk.

Mosqitter has built local manufacturing and sales operations in Brazil, a high-dengue-burden market, and counts the U.S., Greece, India, Ukraine, and Nigeria among its other key markets, each with its own sales approach — from direct-to-consumer Mini sales on Amazon in the U.S. to a Febris deployment with the U.K. Health Security Agency at Heathrow and Gatwick airports. The startup is on track to generate more than $1 million in revenue in 2026 and projects Febris could add more than $3.5 million next year based on contracts it is bidding on. It is raising a $5 million round in two tranches — $1 million followed by $4 million tied to Febris milestones — having raised $1.9 million to date.

Why it matters

As dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases spread into new regions, governments and airports are increasingly treating real-time vector surveillance as public-health infrastructure — a shift that could turn Mosqitter’s data layer into a recurring-revenue business distinct from hardware sales.