Oryx Dental is an AI-powered dental practice management software platform that brings together clinical care, practice management, patient communication, imaging, revenue cycle management, and business intelligence. Founder and CEO Dr. Rania Saleh created the company after experiencing firsthand the limitations of traditional dental software while operating her own multi-site practice. Just as Toast transformed the restaurant industry by giving restaurants an operating system for their whole business, Oryx gives dental practices their own OS in the cloud.
Pulse 2.0 interviewed Oryx Dental Founder and CEO Dr. Rania Saleh to learn more about the company’s origins, AI strategy, growth, and vision for the dental office of the future.
Dr. Rania Saleh’s Background
When asked about her background, Dr. Saleh shared:
You could say I was destined for dentistry: both my parents were dentists in Lebanon and Canada, and I grew up between home, their practice, and school.
I’m not what many would consider the typical tech CEO or founder. It was never on the roadmap of how I envisioned my life, and I really loved being a dentist.
It made me happy to help patients solve their healthcare issues and feel more confident and healthy.
But when my own dental practice started to suffer after I needed to take a step back from the day-to-day in 2016, I realized that many of our issues just weren’t being met by the software solutions on the market.
And so I decided to build my own.
How Oryx Dental Started
When asked how the idea for Oryx Dental came together, Dr. Saleh explained:
In 2016, the dental software landscape was vastly different. It was dominated by a small handful of established players who, by and large, were on-premise, traditional offerings.
The software was inflexible and clunky, focused on mostly the nuts and bolts of running a business, and didn’t have a clinical component.
Oryx was born from my own, real-world needs as a dentist.
In 2016, I was the owner of a thriving dental practice with two offices in the DC area. I’d started that business to practice dentistry the way I wanted. Instead of focusing on procedures and doing as many of them as possible, my practice was about holistic oral health.
All my patients received a very thorough, in-depth process inspired by the Kois Center, a leading dental education program focused on holistic oral health, and I provided them with tons of information to help make the right decision for their oral health.
Patients loved this. We were thriving and growing fast, and I’d brought on several associates to meet demand.
Then, unexpectedly, I was put on long-term bed rest for a high-risk twin pregnancy.
And from my bed, I watched as my practice declined.
Patient satisfaction was dropping.
Quickly, I realized that associates were not doing my in-depth process. Even though I tried to coach them from afar, it wasn’t working.
What if, I wondered, I could standardize and teach my process, so every clinician in the office could do it?
That is when my husband, a software engineer, offered to code my process into software, and that was how Oryx Dental was born.
It worked in my office, and my dentist friends started asking for it.
And they started asking for more features and capabilities.
I sold my multi-site practice to bootstrap Oryx Dental and grow the company.
We’re still growing strong today. Our growth has all been organic, and we’re accelerating even fasternow.
Favorite Memory
When asked about her favorite memory working for the company so far, Dr. Saleh said:
We recently launched a CE program for customers called Oryx Unlocked, and it’s been incredibly satisfying. So far, we’ve educated more than 400 dentists in 2026.
We’ve held meetings across multiple cities, and it’s just been incredible to meet our users and customers in person and see their genuine excitement about using Oryx.
The rooms are full of people who love what we’ve built at Oryx.
Being with them is such a source of energy and inspiration.
I’m always telling our team that Oryx is the obvious choice for dental practices, and our customers are constantly reinforcing this. They’re sharing how much they love the software and also how much they love our team. Everyone here is so invested in their success.
Core Products And Features
When asked about Oryx Dental’s core products and features, Dr. Saleh detailed:
When we started Oryx in 2016, the core feature was the in-depth, 7-minute clinical exam.
Dentists loved that they could standardize patient intake and generate a really high-quality basis for discussions, education, and treatment options.
From that clinical care, Oryx expanded into a full dental practice management software (DPMS) platform.
We have everything dentists need to unite the three core capabilities of any dental practice: clinical care, practice management, and patient communication.
We’re also AI powered, having introduced a huge number of native AI features starting last year.
In fact, that initial clinical intake form has been replaced with an AI-based, ambient listening feature that automatically completes the intake based on the real-time, chairside patient conversation.
Without digging into dozens of features, some of our key features include:
- AI-powered perio charting, business workflows, guided exam, and transcription.
- Our signature seven-minute, evidence-based exam with autogenerated notes and risk-centered scheduling.
- Native dental imaging capabilities with AI annotations, plus integrations with leading imaging providers Pearl AI and Overjet.
- Data-driven insights for business growth, including performance tracking.
- Automated insurance billing and revenue cycle management (RCM) tools.
- Patient management and scheduling tools, such as automated appointment messaging.
- And much more.
Adapting Vertical SaaS For AI
When asked about recent challenges in the sector and how Oryx Dental has addressed them, Dr. Saleh explained:
As a vertical SaaS company, we faced the same existential questions that the industry has faced since 2022.
Lots of people have predicted the “SaaSpocalypse,” and it’s truly innovate or die for many companies.
While vertical SaaS like dentistry is more insulated than one-off tools or other SaaS companies, we of course had to look deeply at our product, assess risks, and decide how to embrace AI.
What we found is that vertical SaaS is actually enhanced, not killed, by AI.
In fact, today, 70% of new Oryx customers sign up for our AI and automation plan.
It wasn’t always easy, like in the case of re-writing that original, core clinical exam to incorporate AI.
But I don’t think of it as killing the product. We’re just evolving it to be more intuitive and useful to dentists.
Key Company Milestones
When asked about some of Oryx Dental’s most significant milestones, Dr. Saleh highlighted:
We’ve come a long way since 2016.
Some of the milestones we’ve marked along the way include helping customers collect more than $5B in payments and treat 7M patients over those ten years.
We began by reimagining how dental exams should be done and what the patient experience should look like.
The journey was amazing, but it needed a lot of human commitment.
Now we are reimagining everything with AI to help dental offices deliver the best care and give the patients the best experience without having huge teams.
Dental offices are responding really well to these new features and the AI-powered experience.
We’ve nearly doubled ARR year over year and now, as mentioned, 70% of our new customers sign up for AI plans.
Customer Success Stories
When asked to share specific customer success stories, Dr. Saleh said:
Absolutely. We’re so fortunate to have wonderful customers from across the full spectrum of dental offices.
Some are recent graduates opening their first dental office, while others are veterans with 20+ years of experience, and beyond.
For example, one story I love to share is Dr. Milca Mendez-Ceballos, a rockstar pediatric dentist in Pennsylvania.
She opened her office with Oryx onboard from the very first day.
She saw her monthly production grow by 50 to 100% between month 3 to 12 in business.
In that first year in business, she increased her active patient base by up to 125% and brought on an average of 80 to 100 new patients a month.
We love working with her, and it’s been inspiring to watch her practice thrive.
We like to say we’re obsessed with our customers, and the feeling is mutual. They’re obsessed with us, too.
Many of our users will develop their own custom workflows, and then they offer those to Oryx for use.
We’ve partnered with many of our customers to turn their systems into best-in-class practices embedded into Oryx’s workflow.
For example, Dr. Meredith Gantos is an Illinois-based dentist who runs a very tight ship in terms of optimizing her schedule and her insurance reimbursement collections.
She’s shared her best practices and workflows with our AI team to help make improvements within our product, which is helping other Oryx users increase their own insurance collections, decrease outstanding balances, and improve patient show rates.
Funding And Growth
When asked about funding and revenue metrics, Dr. Saleh explained:
As a bootstrapped company, we don’t have VC funding numbers to share.
While we aren’t sharing revenue at this time, I can share that we nearly doubled our ARR year over year, grew revenue 402% between 2023 and 2026, and also doubled our customer base. Today, nearly 2,000 dental practices across 5 continents use Oryx.
While we’ve always grown steadily, the last year has been a landmark for us, and we don’t see things slowing down any time soon.
Total Addressable Market
When asked about the total addressable market Oryx Dental is pursuing, Dr. Saleh assessed:
There are over 200,000 dentists in the US, according to the American Dental Association’s 2025 dental workforce report, and the workforce is getting younger as older dentists retire.
At the same time, the American Dental Hygienists Association estimates there are over 220,000 registered dental hygienists in the U.S.
If you think about both those numbers globally, the number of dentists and hygienists scales massively.
Many practices both in the US and worldwide are operating on pen and paper, as if it were the 1990s.
Others who have moved to software are often using older software with an on-prem model.
With the advent of cloud-based dental practice management software and, more recently, AI solutions, more and more dental practices are moving to the cloud.
While there are many varying estimates available both publicly and privately about market penetration of cloud-based dental practice management software, we at Oryx are comfortable saying there is a multi-billion dollar opportunity for dental software in the US alone, with many more billions in opportunity worldwide.
Competitive Differentiation
When asked what differentiates Oryx Dental from its competition, Dr. Saleh said:
We actually are dentists, building Oryx for the future of dentistry.
We know how difficult this industry can be and the day-in-and-day-out challenges of running a dental practice because we have actually been there and done it.
That in-the-trenches, clinical perspective is truly at the root of everything we do, and dentists can tell.
We’re obsessed with our customers, and every feature and product starts with a real-world problem that someone’s seeing on the ground.
Our customers return the obsession, too.
We love to hear from them about what’s working and not working, where they need more help, and the ever-changing business environment they face.
Future Goals
When discussing Oryx Dental’s future goals, Dr. Saleh explained:
Our mission is simple: keep creating the dental office of the future, today.
We want to help more dental practices of all shapes and sizes, from one-office startups to dentist-owned group practices, DSOs, and beyond, to achieve the highest level of clinical care, grow their businesses, and live the lives they want.
Oral Health As Healthcare
When invited to discuss another topic, Dr. Saleh concluded:
Dentistry was an under-innovated space for decades.
It didn’t really get pulled along by the big SaaS, enterprise boom of the early 2010s.
And it’s also treated differently from healthcare, siloed into separate schools, medical school vs. dental school, excluded from EMRs and other hospital/health system technology, and served by totally different insurance providers and ICD codes.
And yet, oral health is often the harbinger of bigger issues.
Any dentist could tell you that they’ve been able to tell patients have heart issues, diabetes, and other health conditions just from an oral exam.
In fact, when I was a practicing dentist, I’d often refer patients to a local cancer care center for early warning signs, much to the surprise of the doctors there.
They had no idea that dentists could spot these conditions.
I think we’re long overdue for a conversation in the healthcare space about how oral health is healthcare, and how we can view patients’ health more holistically.
