Category: Startups

Optura Closes Series A for ROAI Platform

Posted on by Jason Barry

The only thing healthcare orgs love more than AI is ROI, and Optura just raised $17.5M of Series A funding to give them the best of both worlds with its ROAI platform.

It’s time for a Return on AI Investment. Leadership teams across the industry are facing tighter margins, more compliance exposure, and heightened board scrutiny around their AI investments.

  • As payers and providers shift AI gears from proof-of-concept to performance, the big question becomes which initiatives – if any – are driving measurable value.

That’s where Optura comes in. The ROAI platform is designed to answer three key questions. 

  • How healthy is our AI program?
  • Which of our AI initiatives are generating a return?
  • Does our roadmap support further innovation?

Optura takes a three-pronged approach to finding the answers. First, it works directly with C-suites to get organized around AI and evaluate ideas against their business priorities.

  • That looks like systematically mapping an organization’s existing data into a unified knowledge layer so every decision is grounded in how that org operates. 
  • It then scores and ranks use cases against organizational priorities, cost, and readiness before translating the top priorities into AI agents. Optura’s forward-deployed engineers help operationalize the agents while making sure they stay aligned with key priorities.
  • The third step (that many companies still miss) is closing the loop. Optura continuously measures how AI contributes back into the P&L, quality scores, and care delivery – creating a flywheel that strengthens future initiatives.

The traction metrics back up the strategy.  

  • Optura actively manages $2B of AI initiatives through the platform.
  • It’s tracked over $120M of new value – otherwise known as ROAI.
  • More than 250 healthcare AI use cases have been identified as value-drivers.

The Takeaway

Optura could probably crush it just by sitting on the trademark for ROAI. Instead, it raised $17.5M to build real relationships with healthcare orgs and prove why “its love language is showing value.”

Nourish Cooks Up $100M of Series C Funding

Posted on by Jason Barry

Nearly 200M Americans are hungry for help managing a nutrition-related chronic condition, so Nourish just raised $100M of Series C funding to fill their plates with AI-native metabolic care.

Nourish is a proactive substitute for a reactive recipe. Its entire virtual metabolic clinic is purpose-built to tackle chronic conditions before problems start to escalate.

  • The care model revolves around nutrition-first interventions, but it’s the fully coordinated wraparound support that transforms access into better long-term outcomes.
  • The secret ingredient? Dietitians… plus AI, obviously.

Over the last four years, Nourish has grown into the country’s largest dietitian-led metabolic health clinic, with a roster of over 10,000 Registered Dietitians.

  • Every Nourish patient works with an RD to work through a comprehensive care plan – with lab testing, GLP-1 prescribing, and medication management all baked in if needed.
  • Patients also receive a personal AI agent to support behavior change and coordinate with other providers. These reportedly have “hundreds of thousands of MAUs and world-class engagement metrics.”
  • The RDs are equipped with their own AI agents to help surface insights, automate administrative work, and improve quality of care.

The outcomes are the main course. Nourish patients see an average of: 

  • 8% weight loss
  • 1.3-point A1C reduction
  • 31-point LDL reduction
  • 23-point systolic BP reduction

GLP-1s are the dessert people can’t get enough of. Despite demand for metabolic care exploding alongside the rise of GLP-1s, medication alone is rarely enough – only 46% of patients stay on GLP-1s at six months, and most who quit regain the weight.

  • Nourish’s care model shines here too. Over two-thirds of Nourish patients remain on GLP-1s at six months, and they lose 33% more weight on their way there.

The Takeaway

Nutrition support has been covered by insurance for over a decade, yet only a tiny fraction of those who could benefit ever actually use it. GLP-1s changed that demand equation, and Nourish just loaded its plate with $100M to give people the access they’re suddenly craving.

Enhanced Goes Public With World Record Twist

Posted on by Jason Barry

The Enhanced Group just kept the digital health SPAC dream alive with its public market debut, but it took more than some juiced up athletes to justify its billion dollar valuation.

What if the Olympics allowed steroids? Next week’s Enhanced Games might be the answer.

Enhanced made a big splash when it first announced the events kicking off in Vegas this Sunday. It’s easy to see why:

  • Athletes – 50
  • Events – Swimming, Track, Weightlifting, Strongman
  • World Record Bounty – $25,000,000
  • Performance Enhancing Drugs – Go for it. There’s no testing.

That’ll definitely pull viewers. It’s also only a sliver of Enhanced’s actual gameplan.

  • Every event is open to the public, at no cost, and so are the media rights. The entire spectacle is designed to get social media clips and as many eyeballs as possible.
  • It might sound like Enhanced is building a new-gen marketing company, but it’s actually building a patient funnel that most telehealth companies could only dream of.

The real revenue comes after the records are broken. Earlier this month, Enhanced quietly added some sleek new buttons to its website. They all point to Live Enhanced.

  • Live Enhanced is a direct-to-consumer telehealth platform that offers the full catalogue of 2026 trending medications. Peptites, GLP-1s, TRT, you name it.
  • While other startups are busy peddling these with nothing but fake doctor Facebook accounts, Enhanced is doing it with genuine world records and famous athletes.

Telehealth makes more than TikTok. Enhanced has been putting the athletes that are participating in the games through a gauntlet of clinical studies using the drugs available on Live Enhanced. 

  • Every dose, every rep, and every rest is getting packaged into protocols for fans and patients alike. 
  • If an athlete breaks a record, they’ll probably have people lining up to try their protocol – even if Live Enhanced doesn’t mention a few extracurricular enhancements.

The Takeaway

Despite all the hype around the Games, Enhanced’s real product is the protocols – the rest is just lead gen. It’s the same blueprint as Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint, only on steroids;)

Photon Raises $16M to Power Up Prescriptions

Posted on by Jason Barry

Electronic prescribing was designed to move prescriptions from point A to point B, not to give patients the information needed to pick those points on the spot. Photon just raised $16M in Series A funding to fill that gap.

Photon got its start in 2021 building prescription infrastructure for direct-to-consumer telehealth companies, powering some of the fastest-growing brands of the pandemic and GLP-1 era.

That experience provided a solid foundation. Photon built deep integrations across pharmacy networks, real-time formulary data, and a patient-first prescribing experience.

  • That foundation not only proved compelling to DTC startups, but also to health systems looking for better ways to engage patients at the point of care and drive visibility into their in-house pharmacies. 
  • Fast forward to the Series A, and Photon is leaning in on the enterprise market where it can make the biggest impact.

Photon isn’t a pricing widget. It’s an end-to-end platform that includes:

  • Modern prescribing and routing infrastructure
  • A network of pharmacy partners across retail and home delivery
  • A consumer-facing marketplace that surfaces real-time price and stock information
  • A full suite of capabilities including prior auths and clinical decision support 

AI underpins everything. Photon’s AI ingests fragmented data across pharmacy networks, benefit structures, and formularies, then translates it into info that patients can actually use.

  • That gives patients a sense of what’s convenient, what’s covered, what delivery options are available, and most importantly – price. 
  • Put it all together, and patients can make informed choices before prescriptions ever get sent.

Health systems get something equally valuable. The prescription becomes a patient engagement touchpoint instead of a handoff.

  • In-house pharmacy teams gain real-time visibility into fill activity, and having patients that are actually informed results in fewer abandoned scripts, less reroutes, and a meaningfully better experience for everyone involved.

The Takeaway

Right when healthcare services are getting disrupted by LLMs and agents, patients are hitting a boiling point with affordability and transparency. The pharmacy experience is a major intersection for both roads, and Photon just raised $16M to modernize all four corners.

Inside the World’s First One-Man AI Unicorn

Posted on by Jason Barry

We officially have our first one-man, billion-dollar AI startup, and it’s in healthcare… for better or worse.

It was hard to be online last week without stumbling across the New York Times profile on “How A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8 Billion Company.”

The article tells a shimmering tale of AI entrepreneurship. The 41-year old founder took just two months, $20k, and a dozen AI tools to get his startup Medvi off the ground.

  • Medvi plays at the intersection of two trends that seem almost engineered to mint new billionaires: agentic AI and GLP-1s.
  • The online telehealth provider offers GLP-1s for weight loss, with an army of AI agents handling everything from website copy and design to ad images and customer service.
  • It had 300 customers in its first month, generated $401M in its first full year (2025), and revenue is now on track to hit $1.8B after the founder doubled the headcount by hiring his brother.

Medvi is basically dropshipping healthcare. They’re in the business of acquiring customers, not delivering care. The entire clinical infrastructure runs through turnkey partners.

  • CareValidate manages the physician licensing and prescriptions.
  • OpenLoop handles the pharmacy fulfillment and shipping.

Here’s what NYT forgot to mention. The article notes that Medvi’s founder was “nervous to talk publicly” about the company and hasn’t exactly been waving his momentum around.

Some solid sleuthing from digital health’s finest offers a few hints as to why that might be:

  • Medvi (or partners with a conveniently long leash) spun up 800+ fake doctor Facebook accounts to aggressively advertise their meds. Not great.
  • They’re named in a lawsuit alleging a nationwide scheme to manufacture and promote a fraudulent, unapproved oral tirzepatide pill. Also not great, allegedly.
  • Their onboarding accepted a user with a February 31st birthday, then told them they had a 94% chance of hitting their goal weight of 200lbs starting from 7’11” and 350lbs. Yikes.

Sam Altman called it. The OpenAI CEO was spot on with his prediction that AI would quickly let solo founders generate billions by eliminating the inefficiency seen at larger orgs. Unfortunately in healthcare, much of that “inefficiency” is in place to protect patients.

The Takeaway

Is it impressive that one founder and a little grayhat marketing can now do billions in revenue? Yes. Should we be dropshipping healthcare through predatory ad funnels? Probably not. 

Garner Raises $118M and Becomes Care Navigation Unicorn

Posted on by Jason Barry

This year’s been good for the unicorns, and care navigation startup Garner just became the latest member of the herd after closing $118M of Series D funding at a $1.35B valuation.

Show us the incentives and we’ll show you the outcomes. Garner’s proprietary provider-ranking engine helps patients find the best doctors for their needs, then creates financial incentives to actually go and see them.

  • The engine runs on de-identified data from over 320M patients, which gives Garner the evidence it needs to identify doctors that produce the best outcomes and lowest costs.
  • Every metric answers an important question. Which doctors follow the latest research? Who avoids unnecessary procedures? Who gets patients healthy the fastest? 

Those top providers put up some impressive stat lines. 

  • 75% fewer complications
  • 60% fewer hospitalizations
  • 3x greater adherence to medical guidelines 

Garner takes it a step further. Instead of the usual services-heavy care navigation strategy, Garner’s engine has the incentives for real behavior change baked in. 

  • When employees choose a top provider, Garner picks up the tab – copays, deductibles, and even some procedures. 

The end result speaks for itself. Garner’s clients see a 12% average reduction in total healthcare spending, and their healthy employees are happy employees.

  • Garner already works with 700 organizations reaching 2.5M members, and revenue was up 130% last year as employers increasingly look beyond traditional approaches to combat rising costs. 

What’s next? The fresh funds were earmarked for bolstering the provider-ranking engine, scaling AI navigation capabilities, and growing its team to keep up with demand.

The Takeaway

If data on complication rates and hospital readmissions can help identify the best physicians, then it should also be able to reduce overall costs. Seems like a sound thesis, and Garner just scored another $118M to prove it.

Function Lands $298M for Medical Intelligence

Posted on by Jason Barry

The face of the health membership movement is now worth $2.5B after Function landed $298M of Series B funding to prove that subscription care is here to stay.

Function is building an “operating system for human health.” The OS “fuses AI with medical expertise to empower 8 billion people to take control of their health and get ahead of disease.”

  • Translation: Function offers personalized nutrition and lifestyle recommendations based on a massive menu of lab tests that members can access for $365 per year.
  • Unlike most annual physicals that measure ~26 biomarkers, Function offers 160+ tests spanning from the heart and hormones to heavy metals and cancer signals.
  • It also doubled down with the acquisition of Ezra earlier this year, adding AI-guided full-body MRIs (for detecting cancers, endometriosis, strokes) and CT scans (for lung tumors, heart plaque, soft tissue damage).

The Medical Intelligence Lab takes the vision even further. Function just launched its Medical Intelligence Lab to unify all of its data – labs, imaging, wearables, and medical records – into a continuously learning model designed to reveal patterns and surface actionable insights.

The lab gives members immediate access to three new AI capabilities:

  • Private AI Chat – answers health questions with responses informed by member data.
  • Protocols – translate complex data into health plans with easy-to-follow steps.
  • Health Records – members can securely upload lab results, visit notes, and medical records to feed into Private AI Chat and Protocols.

The testing gold rush is here… but that might not be great for everyone. Research has shown that direct-to-consumer testing companies have a history of wading into murky waters, particularly misleading marketing and a lack of care continuity.

  • Function will have to prove that its benefits outweigh those risks, but hundreds of thousands of members are already voting with their wallets that the math checks out.

The Takeaway

Function will tell you that it isn’t just leading a new category, it’s setting the standard for how we understand, manage, and extend human health. If that turns out to be true, then $298M should go a long way toward proving it.

Fabric Continues Acquisition Spree With UCM

Posted on by Jason Barry

Fabric is back at it again with its fifth acquisition in less than three years, picking up telehealth provider UCM Digital Health to round out its virtual care portfolio.

Here’s a look at Fabric’s M&A journey since launching in 2023 to tackle capacity constraints:

  • May 2023 – Fabric nabs Zipnosis from Bright Health to expand into asynchronous care.
  • Jan 2024 – Fabric scoops up GYANT to provide an AI-entry point to its services.
  • June 2024 – Fabric acquires MeMD and its 30k payor/employer partners from Walmart.
  • Sept 2024 – Fabric broadened its provider network by acquiring TeamHealth VirtualCare.
  • Nov 2025 – Fabric leans in on payors and employers with UCM Digital Health.

End-to-end platforms are built brick-by-brick. Fabric got its start by bringing consumer mobile app experiences to the ER, but it’s quickly expanded into new verticals and use cases.

  • The acquisition spree has grown Fabric into a comprehensive access and experience platform backed by its own medical group, which allows it to streamline virtual-first care for patients across the country.

Fabric’s Hybrid AI is the connective tissue. It automates routine processes to make all the M&A pieces fit together, while also streamlining care coordination and clinical decision support to make its providers more efficient. 

  • By reducing provider work time to just 89 seconds for asynchronous visits, Fabric enables faster treatments for patients and saves payors up to $17 per member per month – all while maintaining outcomes on par with in-person care.

What’s the end result? Salvaging MeMD from the rubble of Walmart’s telehealth business already gave Fabric a strong foothold in the payor/employer market, and UCM will deepen its impact.

  • UCM adds another 400 payor and employer customers to the mix. They’ll transition to the Fabric platform and reap the benefits of its national provider network and polished patient experiences.
  • That brings Fabric’s total client roster to over 75 health systems, 30k employers, and more than 100M lives across all 50 states. Not too shabby for a startup still looking forward to its third birthday.

The Takeaway

Fabric’s been acquiring and integrating new platform capabilities as fast as any digital health company out there, and the “buy-and-build” approach definitely seems to be working. They might be spinning a lot of plates, but they haven’t dropped one yet.

Hippocratic Closes Series C to Fuel Patient-Facing Agents

Posted on by Jason Barry

Rising tides lift all boats, and the venture-backed surge in AI startups just helped boost Hippocratic AI’s valuation to $3.5B on the back of $126M in Series C funding.

Do no harm. Hippocratic’s “safety-focused” AI agents perform almost any low-risk, patient-facing task under the sun. 

  • That includes appointment scheduling, patient intake history, SDOH surveys, health risk assessments, post-discharge outreach, and even chronic condition management.
  • They don’t diagnose patients or prescribe medications… at least not yet.

The Polaris Safety Constellation Architecture makes it all possible. Hippocratic’s healthcare LLM constellation leverages multiple specialized models that “double-check the primary model to ensure accuracy and safety.”

  • The company then performs output testing, human evaluations, and cross-validations to make sure its models’ real-world performance lives up to their simulated testing.

Hippocratic is moving quickly. In just 15 months since commercialization, it’s established partnerships with over 50 major health systems, payors, and pharma clients in six countries.

  • Many of those health system partners have also become investors after being “very impressed” on the safety front, including Universal Health Services, Cincinnati Children’s, and WellSpan Health.
  • The AI agents have already expanded to more than 1,000 use cases and completed upwards of 115M patient interactions – with no reported safety issues.

The nine-figure round sets the tone for the next chapter. Hippocratic earmarked the funding to usher in an “era of abundance” that healthcare has never seen before.

  • At the tactical level, that will involve fueling expansion through mergers and acquisitions, accelerating product development, and leaning in on international growth.

The Takeaway

Whether business makes bubbles or bubbles make business, raising another $143M from industry insiders makes it seem like business is booming at Hippocratic AI.

Assort Health Raises $76M for Experience Agents

Posted on by Jason Barry

A good patient experience starts with a good first impression, and Assort Health just closed $76M of Series B funding to prove its AI agents can deliver exactly that.

Accessing care is a painful process. The Assort OS platform delivers AI agents that can help manage patients’ needs, give staff more bandwidth for higher-level tasks, and reduce friction (AKA frustration) for everyone involved.

  • The agents go beyond scheduling, handling everything from care navigation and prescription renewals to physician referrals and lab tests. 

Goodbye hold music, hello agents. Providers have less staff to manage more patients, so they’re desperately looking for ways to offload the burden on the front office. Voice agents have become the go-to solution, and it’s tough to stand out.

Assort lists several core features that separate it from the pack:

  • Specialty-specific agents – PCPs and oncologists aren’t asking patients the same questions, and Assort adapts to the unique needs of each specialty.  
  • Seamless integration – Assort’s agents integrate directly into the EHR and practice management systems, allowing them to work within the unique clinical rules and workflows of each provider.
  • 90% resolution rate – The specialty-specific tuning allows Assort’s agents to maintain a resolution rate above 90%, while limiting errors like misdirected referrals.

Momentum builds momentum. There might be a ton of startups jumping into the voice AI arena, but not many are closing a Series B less than four months after their Series A. 

  • Assort’s investors will tell you that it’s “leading the re-platforming of patient engagement into the AI-native era.” At least they’re putting their money where their mouth is.
  • Assort now plans to use the $102M it’s raised over the last four months to get its agents into as many practices as possible before the competition gets their first.

The Takeaway

The race is on to transform the patient experience with the magic of AI, and Assort might just have enough agents (and VC dollars) to pull a rabbit out of its hat.

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