Cue the swelling music from Max Steiner, or a modern score from George Antheil. Joe Kiani, the former CEO/founder of Masimo, has moved on from his booting (with extreme prejudice, one can say) from that company after 35 years in September 2024. He has resurfaced in the press after the Masimo sale to medical device/services giant Danaher last week [TTA 18 Feb]. So what has this 61-year-old serial entrepreneur and investor, too young by his own admission to retire and enjoy his money, been up to since? Plenty!
The Forbes article this Editor is digging into is a quick PR-ish skim. The first paragraph accepts his story that he resigned from Masimo after the proxy loss, but a simple crosscheck would have disclosed a more complicated “I quit. No, you’re fired” situation, which is explained below from our coverage at the time. Mr. Kiani has clearly moved on from Masimo with new interests both inside and outside of healthcare. The article briefly touches on his new life, but as usual, we dig a bit further.
- He is executive chairman of Willow Labs. Willow has developed app-based metabolic coaching for diabetes and healthy living, via app-driven Nutu Nudges. Interestingly, looking at the Willow website, Joe Kiani founded it in 1998, nine years after Masimo as a spinout. Its impressive base of 127 patented technologies include those licensed from Masimo, such as the Masimo Rainbow Signal Extraction Technology® (SET). Like Masimo, Willow is located in Irvine, but at the University of California campus. It was renamed from Cercacor in 2024. Joe Kiani bio on Willow. Orange County Business Journal
- His other major gig is as CEO of Like Minded Labs, a media technology company based out of Santa Monica. Cofounded by Joe Kiani, its main product is Coresee, a video conferencing platform that can stream to thousands of viewers at a speed up to 4K at 60 fps. He became CEO in July 2025. Bob Chapek, a former Masimo director and short-lived CEO of the Walt Disney Company, also joined the board then. Release
The article alludes to his other investments in 10 companies. Mr. Kiani joined the board of Clairity as board chairman in January. Clairity is a medtech company with an FDA de novo authorized AI platform, Clairity Breast, that predicts a woman’s five-year risk of developing breast cancer from mammogram imaging. The Boston-based company provided its first patient with a risk score earlier this week. Release. His other board chairman position, announced this past Monday, is with SMSbiotech, based out of San Diego. SMSbiotech is developing adult stem cell technologies for safe, affordable, and ethically grounded regenerative medicine initially targeting COPD. MassDevice
CEO of one company, board chairman of three. You wonder where he will find the time! Cue the music, end credits!
A look back at the stock dispute. After the proxy fight loss, Joe Kiani resigned as Masimo CEO on 19 September 2024, but Masimo formally put him on immediate leave then terminated him for cause on 24 October 2024. ‘For cause’ is germane because it affects post-departure stock options and grants that would boost his undisputed 7.5% common stock holding (4.1 million shares) to 13.2% or approximately an additional 3.2 million shares. (More details based on Ted Green’s Strata-gee deep dive–TTA 30 Apr 2025) This is now being fought in the courts. At the buyout price of $180/share, the undisputed shares amount to $735.4 million, considerably more than Forbes‘ estimate of $500 million, unless he sold shares since 2024. The disputed shares amount to $580.8 million. Not precisely chump change.
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