Akervall Technologies: Inside the Saline Medtech Company

By A2Hub Editorial. Published 2026-05-05. Last updated 2026-04-22.

Akervall Technologies is a U-M faculty-founded medtech company based in Saline, about fifteen minutes south of downtown Ann Arbor, that makes the SISU line of thin, custom-fit dental mouthguards for athletes. It is one of the cleaner examples of a Washtenaw County company taking a defensible materials-science advantage out of U-M and commercializing it directly into a branded consumer medical product without the usual venture-and-exit arc.

At a glance

• Founded: 2008
• Founders: Sassa Akervall and Jan Akervall, MD, PhD (U-M School of Dentistry faculty member and head and neck surgeon at Michigan Medicine)
• HQ: Saline, Michigan (approximately 1250 Industrial Drive area)
• Products: SISU Mouthguards (Aero, Aero Max, Aero NextGen, youth variants), dental protection accessories
• Revenue range: not publicly disclosed; reporting has positioned the company as a profitable, growth-stage private business with international distribution
• Headcount: mid-sized for a Saline medtech manufacturer; Built In and LinkedIn reporting historically place the team in the 50 to 150 range
• Status: privately held
• Website: akervalltechnologies.com, sisuguard.com

What Akervall actually makes

The core product is a thin, high-strength, custom-fit mouthguard built from a proprietary polymer that the company calls Diffusix. The material is thinner than a traditional boil-and-bite mouthguard by a meaningful margin while retaining the impact-absorbing performance that the product category requires. Thinner is not a cosmetic feature. For athletes in contact sports, thinner means less interference with breathing and communication, which is the primary reason athletes historically skip or discard traditional mouthguards.

SISU moved the industry metric from thickness-and-bulk toward a thinner, custom-fit standard. The SISU Aero line sits in the 1.6mm range. The Aero NextGen extends the thin-fit performance with material updates. The product family covers youth, adult, and heavy-contact use cases, sold direct to consumer through sisuguard.com and through a network of dental offices and athletic retailers.

The company also sells into dental practices as a branded custom-fit option that dentists can offer to patients, which is an unusual go-to-market for a consumer sports-protection product and one of the reasons the SISU brand has durability in the market beyond the usual fitness-retail channel.

Founding story

Akervall Technologies was founded in 2008 by Sassa Akervall, who runs the company as CEO, and Jan Akervall, her husband, a U-M School of Dentistry faculty member and Michigan Medicine head and neck surgeon who developed the original polymer research underlying the SISU product. The lineage is classic U-M translational research. A practicing physician and dental faculty member identified a product-category opportunity, a proprietary material was developed, and the company commercialized it from a Saline manufacturing base rather than licensing the technology out to an incumbent.

Sassa Akervall's operating leadership is a meaningful part of the company's profile. Local reporting and industry coverage have consistently cited her as one of the more visible women CEOs in Michigan manufacturing, with the company winning Michigan 50 Companies to Watch and other regional business honors over the past decade.

Saline footprint

Akervall operates from Saline, which sits inside the Washtenaw County tech-and-manufacturing footprint but does not share the downtown Ann Arbor identity most of this directory covers. The Saline base makes operational sense for a medtech manufacturer. The industrial space is cheaper than downtown Ann Arbor, the labor market overlaps with both Ann Arbor and the Detroit manufacturing corridor, and the company is close enough to Michigan Medicine, U-M, and Washtenaw Community College to draw on the broader talent pool.

The team mixes manufacturing operations, dental and materials-science technical leadership, and a consumer brand and e-commerce function that runs the direct-to-athlete and dental-office channels. Headcount has been stable in the mid-size manufacturer range.

Traction

Product distribution is international. SISU is sold in North America, Europe, and selected Asia-Pacific markets through a combination of direct e-commerce, dental offices, and athletic retailers. The customer base skews toward hockey, lacrosse, rugby, boxing, martial arts, and a growing share of football and field-sport users who want a thinner mouthguard than the traditional options offer.

Specific revenue figures are not publicly disclosed, consistent with the company's privately-held, profitable-growth posture. Reporting over the past decade has consistently positioned Akervall as one of the stronger privately-held medtech operators in Washtenaw County, without the venture-capital overhang that shapes most Ann Arbor medtech narratives.

Why Akervall belongs in the Ann Arbor story

Three reasons, all of which matter.

First, it is one of the best examples of a U-M translational research path that did not follow the venture-and-exit template. The company was built, scaled, and retained by its founders. The product shipped to market, the brand grew internationally, and the manufacturing base stayed in Washtenaw County. That template is underrepresented in Ann Arbor tech coverage, which tends to concentrate on the venture-funded SaaS and biopharma arcs.

Second, the manufacturing base matters. Saline hosts a meaningful cluster of small and mid-sized manufacturers that form the industrial layer beneath the Ann Arbor software economy. Akervall's production operations are part of that layer and of the broader case for why Washtenaw County is one of the better small US metros for combined hardware and software work.

Third, the founder-operator story is one of the better counterexamples to the pattern of Ann Arbor companies being acquired and dissolved inside larger consolidators. Sassa Akervall has run the company for close to two decades as CEO, which is a longer tenure than most Ann Arbor software CEOs achieve at a single company.

Competitors and lineage

The sports mouthguard category is crowded at the low end (Shock Doctor, Battle, Under Armour) and thin at the high end, where SISU competes against custom-fit dental-office products and specialty brands serving the professional and elite-amateur athlete segments. The SISU wedge is the thin-fit polymer and the dental-channel distribution combined with direct-to-consumer e-commerce. That combination has held up against larger competitors.

Lineage runs through U-M School of Dentistry and Michigan Medicine, with Jan Akervall as the founding technical lead. The company's Saline base has been consistent since early in its history.

Hiring signal

Akervall's careers page (akervalltechnologies.com/careers) is the primary public source for open roles. Historical hiring weights toward manufacturing operations, quality engineering, dental and materials science technical leadership, and consumer e-commerce and marketing functions. Engineering roles are more on the production and quality side than the software side; engineers looking for a pure-software role should look elsewhere in the Washtenaw County map.

Ann Arbor connection

The company's U-M origin and Saline manufacturing base make it a Washtenaw County company in every practical sense, even though its branding sits outside the downtown-Ann-Arbor software identity most tech coverage leads with. The Michigan Medicine research lineage is the core technical anchor, and the Saline manufacturing economy is the operational one.

Related

• HistoSonics is the unicorn Ann Arbor medtech that exemplifies the U-M-rooted, focused-ultrasound technical lineage.
• Terumo Cardiovascular Systems is the 1,000-person cardiovascular device manufacturer on Jackson Road, the largest medical device employer in the region.
• ONL Therapeutics is the U-M ocular neuroprotection spinout on the clinical-stage side of the medtech cluster.
• Akadeum Life Sciences is the U-M buoyancy-activated cell sorting spinout based in Ann Arbor.
• Ann Arbor medtech companies is the category hub.
• Is Ann Arbor a tech hub? is the pillar essay that frames why Washtenaw County's medtech bench is unusually deep.

FAQ

Where is Akervall Technologies based? Saline, Michigan, inside Washtenaw County and roughly fifteen minutes south of downtown Ann Arbor. The approximate location is the Industrial Drive area in Saline.

What does Akervall Technologies make? The SISU line of thin, custom-fit dental mouthguards, built from a proprietary polymer developed out of U-M School of Dentistry research. Products span the Aero, Aero Max, Aero NextGen, and youth lines.

Who founded Akervall Technologies? Sassa Akervall (CEO) and Jan Akervall, MD, PhD, a U-M School of Dentistry faculty member and Michigan Medicine head and neck surgeon. The company launched in 2008.

Is Akervall hiring? The careers page at akervalltechnologies.com/careers is the primary source for current openings. Hiring historically weights toward manufacturing operations, quality, materials science, and consumer e-commerce roles rather than software engineering.

How big is Akervall Technologies? Mid-sized for a Saline medtech manufacturer. Built In and LinkedIn reporting historically place the team in the 50 to 150 range; specific current headcount should be verified on the company's own materials.

Footer note on sources: The akervalltechnologies.com/careers URL is the best-guess public careers entry point; verify on the company's site before relying on specific open roles.